December 21, 2009

Krampus And The Evil Side of Christmas


In some parts of Europe, namely Austria and Bavaria, Christmas is not all jolly present giving.  There's Krampus to contend with a.k.a. the evil side of Christmas.  Krampus is a mythical, incubus-esque creature with horns who drags some rusty chains around and scares the crap out of all the bad kids.  If they're really bad, legend has it, he will even drag them to the gates of Hell and drop them into the fiery eternal furnace.  Merry Christmas!  Leave it to the Germans to turn Christmas into horror story.

Anyway, here in the US, the tradition of bad children getting coal seems to have fallen by the wayside.  It seems that today's kids get tons of gifts no matter what.  So Krampus has now landed on US soil, with his own website and everything, to get today's lazy, shiftless toddlers in line.  

A couple weeks ago, he made an appearance on the Colbert Report where her terrorized the host and smashed a plate of cookies with his chains.  Personally, I found it a little hard to be scared of the beast, knowing that underneath all that fake fur was my friend Mark Sam, who got the gig due to his fluency in Germanic cursing.  Still, I think Krampus would be a fine addition to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, scaring all the European tourists in midtown.  Oh what a joyous holiday scene that would be!