Anti-Santa, Pagan figure or companion to Saint Nicholas? Who is, really, the Krampus? Let’s
find out! Ready, set… Krampus!
Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and a University
Lecturer and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magic, Esotericism,
Paganism and all things occult.
Today’s video is brought to you by the friend of the Symposium, Vocatus! Thank you so much
for commissioning this video and I truly hope you’re going to enjoy it.
Before diving deeper into the topic, allow me to make a methodological premise.
As you know, my channel is all about disseminating academic scholarship and, different fields
of research will employ distinct methodologies in their enquiry. That’s because different
fields that look at phenomenon – say, a religious one – will investigate diverse
elements and offer knowledge from different perspectives. So, where the historian of religion
will reconstruct a religious practice based on documented evidence and factual developments
over time, the anthropologist of religion will be more concerned with the process of
belief-making and how practitioners conceptualise their practices. As a result, in the latter
field, it may be less relevant whether what practitioners believe did historically occur
as, in the here and now, that narrative is shaping how they ritualise, form and live
their beliefs – a perspective equally deserving of scholarly inquiry.
That said, when it comes to the figure of the Krampus, there is hardly any historical
academic scholarship. There are a few books on the history of the Krampus but they’re
not authored by scholars nor are they peer-reviewed and hence not academic sources; namely, the
kind of sources I use as references for my content on this channel. There are, indeed,
more anthropological and ethnographic accounts on the Krampus and those will be the main
sources and analytical lens for this episode.
What I realised researching for this episode is that most of the information found online
on the Krampus are more modern reports of folk beliefs associated with the Krampus and
other resembling figures, rather than historical representations of the myth and practices
surrounding this creature. Academic studies on the Krampus are mostly context-sensitive.
Not only are they specific to a country but also narrow down the study to a local area
within that country, highlighting that sometimes generalisations make us lose the nuances specific
to a place and lead to lumping together elements that were not perceived as combined in their
native conceptualisation.
So, sticking to what the research suggests, Krampus is the main protagonist of Krampus
Night, a winter festival originating in the Alpen regions of Austria, Southern Germany
and Northern Italy. This is a folk Catholic celebration that takes place on the eve of
Saint Nicholas’ feast day, in-between the 5th and the 6th of December, and features
a procession and public embodiment of the Krampus – an animalistic and demonic creature
– through the use of costumes and masks.
The term Krampus got popularised in the late nineteenth century thanks to the media phenomenon
of the postcard in Austria-Hungary emerged in Vienna in 1897 to then spread in many other
German-speaking cities. People began to send each other red postcards in the weeks leading
up to Christmas that depicted the Krampus, often with a short poem and the tagline ‘Greetings
from the Krampus’. Most of the postcards depicting Krampus fall into two categories:
children and sex. Either the Krampus punishes mischievous children or he becomes mischief
personified, often accompanied by a scantily clad young woman posing erotically.
Annually in Bad Gastein, Austria, troupes of furred, horned man/beast hybrids walk on
the streets during the nights of 5th and 6th of December. These are usually young men in
layers of up to six mottled, long-haired animal skins growl, Steel bells hang from their leather
belts and create a deafening clatter as they advance in a procession, performing a series
of inhuman jerks. Contemporary Krampus processions take many
forms depending on the region in which they occur. St. Nicholas leads the Krampuses in
their procession and a Krampus follows the saint’s cues in the home, waiting to be
“released” upon the kids. Here we have a subservient beast, set loose by an agent
of Christian “goodness” as a signifier of potential punitive measures, hereby keeping
the saint’s pureness and piety intact. This emphasis on children and social control is
waning as these processions proliferate into urban areas in Austria, Germany, and abroad.
Interestingly, I couldn’t find a consensus as to when exactly Krampus got associated
with the patron of children, Saint Nicholas but at some point, in history, he began to
be perceived as his companion. We know that Saint Nicholas became popular in Germany around
the 11th century and plays and processions in his name are said to stem from the Middle
Ages.
So we do have some clues here. The Krampus thus becomes the shadow of Saint Nicholas,
in a dichotomy between evil and good that appears foundational in the Christian belief
system and is reflected in other figures; such as the devil and god or demons and angels.
Now let’s talk about recent re-interpretations in American pop culture.
In his Master's thesis on the figure of Krampus and its development in American pop culture,
Peterson suggests that - along with representations in films and TV shows - two works have had
a significant impact on the increasing popularity as well as the new imagery attributed to Krampus.
The first one is the publication in 2013 of Krampus: The Yule Lord, a dark fantasy novel
by author and fantasy artist Gerald Brom that places the Krampus within a complicated cosmology
in which post-Ragnarök Norse gods have evolved into the figures of contemporary US Christmas
through the use of dark magic. In Brom’s universe, Santa Claus is Baldr, the Norse
god of light in a new form, and the Krampus is a long-forgotten god of Yuletide joy. The
author also attributes to his Krampus a fabricated heritage, turning the Austrian figure into
the son of the Norse underworld goddess Hel and the grandson of mythology’s headlining
trickster, Loki.
This representation of Krampus has gained traction in the US due to an article that
appeared on the nationalgeographic.com in December of 2013.
The article, entitled, “Who is Krampus? Explaining the horrific Christmas beast”
and authored by Tanya Basu proposes that Krampus's name is derived from the German word Krampen,
which means claw, and is said to be the son of Hel in Norse mythology. This new genealogy
for the Krampus has proliferated widely online and, Peterson argues, could be the basis for
the figure’s popularity with North American Heathens and other Neo-Pagan practitioners
. But does the Krampus really have Pagan origins?
Well, we know that there are references to festivals akin to Krampus Night dating back
to the thirteenth century and that it is a common belief that the tradition has pre-Christian
roots.
However, Rest and Seiser argue that, after evaluating historical evidence, they could
conclude that the idea that Krampus and Krampus-like figures have pre-Christian origins is not
really a result of locally passed down knowledge, but a story deliberately disseminated by folklorists
in the early twentieth century.
The two main theses often offered to assert a Pagan origin of Krampus-like figures are
(one) that they derive from a Pagan deity or (two) from Pagan folk practices, which
were banned by the Church at some point and then re-introduced in a Christian vest.
However, it's only in the 1980s that the ethnologist Hans Schuhladen worked systematically through
the historical records and found no ‘pagan’ origins. His earliest source is, in fact,
clearly modern, dating 1582. Here, in the Bavarian town of Diessen, those who had ‘hunted
the Percht’ received a monetary reward. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
reports from Bavaria, Tyrol and Salzburg flourished but, once again, the word Krampus is absent
as all of these historical sources use Percht instead. This led to speculations of a possible
association with the old deity Perchta, but the similarity between the two words seems
to be the only clear connection between pre-Christian religious beliefs and the Krampus.
As for the practices being forbidden, the numerous bans were not intended to eradicate
superstition or pagan traditions but were imposed because the authorities saw them as
a threat to public order, in the form of young masked people roaming the streets at night,
drinking, dancing, fighting and possibly engaging in sexual activities.
Aside from the Pagan interpretation, we see in a contemporary secularised America Krampus
as being opposed to Santa Klaus, mirroring the opposition between Krampus and Saint Nicholas
in Austria, yet with a late-capitalist undertone.
Where Santa Klaus symbolises consumerism and being good according to Christian values,
Krampus embodies rebellion against the societal norms dictating how this festivity should
be lived and celebrated. This echoes the romanticised interpretation of Satan we covered in another
episode… and concludes this one.
And how are you going to celebrate this year? Are you more Santa or Krampus material?
[hinting at herself… Krampus!]
This is it for today’s video. Thank you again Vocatus for reaching out and commissioning
a video on this topic.
As for you, my kind viewer, if you like my content and want me to keep the academic fun
going, please consider supporting my work with a one-off PayPal donation, by joining
Memberships or my Inner Symposium on Patreon, where you will get access to our amazing community
on Discord, monthly lectures, a book club and lots of other perks depending on your
chosen tier.
And if you did like this video, don’t forget to SMASH the like button, subscribe to the
channel, activate the notification bell so you will never miss a new upload from me,
share the video with your friends it really helps us grow. And as always, stay tuned for
all the Academic Fun!
Bye for now.