Badly Needed: Campus Crusade for Krampus Claws, the original Grinch!
Posted on December 4, 2009 at 7:50 am by Dr. Jim
According to National Geographic, an old Yuletime demon is scaring kids into behaving once again in the alpine areas of Austria.
From National Geographic Blog Central
Krampus (the name means Claw) allegedly appears before Christmas, stealing naughty children away in his sack only to be defeated by the good St. Nicholas who could send the demon back to the infernal regions.
Wikipedia's Dutch St. Nick pic.
St. Nicholas, can put Krampus in his place.
The centuries old belief is making a comeback in Austria after being marginalized in the 1800′s by the church. Marc Silver writes:
Europe once had a roster of Christmas rascals like Krampus, many with pagan roots. And Yule was a lot like today’s Halloween, partly because farmers had time off from chores and could party with abandon. On December 5, the eve of St. Nick’s feast day, folks would bang on doors for food and drink.
Against Krampus, Frosty doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in, well, hell.
Apparently, his nightmarish reign is returning to Austria and there are scores of Krampus Clubs in Salzburg alone.
Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun! Darn churchy spoil sports! This is a tradition we need to import!
We really have excised almost all awareness of evil from kid’s experiences. I think older kids are treated to a lot of apocalyptic imagery in movies and cartoons (probably mostly directed at boys, I suspect), but real meditations on fear, death, unpleasantness are rapidly being censored out. I wonder if it is really making a positive difference. It might be. Anyone with ideas? Of course, I don’t have any kids who will be kept up all night with nightmares…
December 4, 2009 at 10:46 am
a christmas boogey man! brilliant!
December 4, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I thought that fat goofy man in red in the supermarkets was the Christmas boogie man. He seems to make alot of kids cry.
December 4, 2009 at 4:46 pm
it’s not just death, fear, etc. that children are being sheltered from, it’s failure in the schools too. If children don’t know failure, how will they appreciate success?
Just my $0.02.
December 4, 2009 at 6:53 pm
oh no- dont get me going on the whole moronic ‘every kid is filled with equal potential and can be anything they want’ lunacy.
December 4, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Kids don’t fail anymore. They aren’t allowed to. In the official words of 1 school district, children ‘defer success until next school year’.
December 4, 2009 at 11:36 pm
“deferred success until next year” is why we have high school graduates unable to read. They’re just being pushed through the system like cattle. A friend of mine said the other day that she’s unable to read her 12 year old’s cursive handwriting it’s so poor, and that he was unaware of the order of the months of the year until recently. Frightening.
December 24, 2009 at 3:38 pm
We NEED Krampus. Kids don’t have any fear anymore. There is no what if I’m bad, will I get Christmas, mentality. It’s just assumed that they get it, and they always do.
Krampus puts the fear of God into kids and makes them well behaved. i know that alot of people think that fear shoulden’t be a part of the merriment of the Holiday Season, but it makes wonderful sense to me to instill such a Character.
December 5, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Frohe Krampusnacht!
Merry Krampus Night!
December 5, 2011