{"id":105516,"date":"2016-12-05T17:40:37","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T22:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=105516"},"modified":"2016-12-06T16:31:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T21:31:57","slug":"krushing-on-krampus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/05\/krushing-on-krampus\/","title":{"rendered":"Krushing on Krampus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"krampus2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t handsome or well-dressed. In fact, he wasn\u2019t dressed. He was the size of an elf, made of fuzzy red chenille. But most striking\u2014considering he arrived in a box of gifts from Vienna in December\u2014was that he had a devilish head with horns and clutched, not a gift, but a bundle of ominous twigs.<\/p>\n

Why was my Austrian friend Susanne sending me a pipe-cleaner devil?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the Krampus,\u201d she told me when we spoke. \u201cBefore Christmas, on December 5, the Krampus shows up at houses where children have misbehaved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is he holding sticks?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBirch switches to beat the bad children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whoa. And then she told me the Krampus drags the really bad ones down to the underworld!<\/p>\n

It was love.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The name Krampus comes from the Old High German word krampen<\/em>, which means claw. (There were no claws or tail on my pipe-cleaner version, and the chenille made him seem almost cuddly.) Some say the Krampus\u2019s mother was the Norse god Hel. In Germanic countries, the Krampus and Saint Nicholas are pretty tight and sometimes hang out together in that good cop\/bad cop sort of way. Krampus (and there are actually gangs of them) is Saint Nicholas\u2019s unforgiving, dark sidekick, half goat and half demon, with claws and a serpentine tail.<\/p>\n

I have empathy for all animals, and that goes for half animals as well. I feel for mermaids, of course, but especially for creatures drawn from Greek mythology: satyrs, fauns, centaurs. And let\u2019s not forget Pan, with his goat horns, legs, and hooves\u2014all of which have been bequeathed to the Krampus, along with Pan\u2019s primal, animal impulses. The Krampus, too, lusts after women. According to nineteenth-century holiday greeting cards called Krampuskarten<\/em>, he even drank champagne with them. He was particularly drawn to those who were guilty of any of the seven deadly sins. The text on my favorite Krampuskart<\/em>\u2014the one where a woman is practically sitting on the Krampus\u2019s lap, raising her champagne\u2014reads: WHIPS AND CHAINS AND PEANUTS AND ORANGES … AND A LITTLE FIRE<\/small>.<\/p>\n

The Krampus, whom I suspect is largely a teetotaler, since I\u2019ve only seen him drinking twice (though rumor has it he likes Schnapps), is not drinking in this drawing, but he certainly has fire in his eyes. Where Pan was impulsive and merely lusty with the girls, a spontaneous sort who was never judgmental, Krampus always ventures out with an agenda.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

We crave the Krampus\u2019s gothic, goaty intensity around the holidays. Shoved aside for the commercial glitter of Santa, he deserves his day in the sun, or rather the moon. Unless he starts leaving store-bought gifts, his kind is not useful to a culture of commerce; I suspect that\u2019s why he never really made it here in the U.S. But a good feature film could change all that. Which leads me to this: I think it\u2019s high time Krampus play the misunderstood, romantic lead villain in cinema.<\/p>\n

Imagine my disappointment last winter when a film called Krampus<\/em> came whimpering into theaters. I went with my nephews. Rupert, eleven, was far more terrified of a\u00a0trailer for a film about a doll that comes to life than he was of the Krampus. Sure, the Krampus and his nasty sidekicks had a foreboding, terrifying presence throughout, but we rarely saw\u00a0him: he had what amounted to a mere cameo.<\/p>\n

Omi, the German grandmother in the film, spells it out for her grandson, who foolishly rips up his hopeful letter to Santa and offers the shreds to the wind: the Krampus, she warns, shows up when people have lost all vestiges of the true \u201cChristmas spirit.\u201d Omi tells the family that Krampus took everyone in her family in post-World War II Germany except her, explaining: \u201cHe left me as a reminder of what happens when hope is lost, when belief is forgotten, and when the Christmas spirit dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"krampus6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But this ignores so much of what makes him great. Like the villains in fairy tales, the Krampus has style<\/em>. He knows how to make an entrance. He wears chains and bells\u2014I love a little \u201cmusical\u201d flair with my villainy\u2014which give him an ominous omniscience. It brings to mind the nearly supernatural stealth of Robert Mitchum, who sings as he stalks two children in 1955\u2019s The Night of the Hunter<\/em>. The young boy, John, hiding in a barn, awakens to see Mitchum on the horizon; he appears as a foreboding black silhouette on his stolen horse, man and horse as one, the sky illuminated behind him as he pursues them during the night. \u201cDon\u2019t he never sleep?\u2019 John asks.<\/p>\n

Mitchum is terrifying even without horns, hooves, pointy ears, or tail. Of all the classic actors suited to play the Krampus, my vote would go not to Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Gary Oldman (Nosferatu<\/em>), or Robert De Niro (what an empathetic \u201cmonster\u201d in Frankenstein<\/em>) but to Mitchum, that child-hunting predator preacher, for his ability to embody dark-souled sinister intentions with relentlessness. Nobody can scream with more \u201canimalistic rage,\u201d as the Guardian<\/em> put it. Because bottom line, the Krampus is a beastly beast, a demon-goat hybrid who lusts to punish.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

When I was in first grade, a second-grade boy named Alan Strissel picked up a piece of industrial wire and whipped it at me, missing my face by a hair. I didn\u2019t flinch. After I passed his \u201ctest,\u201d we walked home from school together every day and watched horror movies at his house. Maybe this is why horror movies are forever tinted with romance for me\u2014sitting next to Alan, who wore cowboy boots and put his arm around me while we watched TV from a floral covered sun-porch swing, all those supernatural villains were misunderstood to my first-grade mind. I liked<\/em> the Wolf Man, who was good at heart and simply out of control.<\/p>\n

To me, Frankenstein\u2019s monster had more humanity (and was way cooler) than Dr. Frankenstein. Robert Mitchum and Jack Palance had a dangerous edge, an aura of ruthlessness that nice, noble and righteous types like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne couldn\u2019t seem to muster. But my view is not the popular one; the world vilifies a villain, even a pretend villain. When Mitchum had the misfortune to die the night before Jimmy Stewart, it was Jimmy whose face made the front page of the papers here in New York. Saint\u00a0Nick, as usual, will steal the limelight\u2014and it\u2019s true, he\u2019s rosy cheeked and more pleasant, despite the fact that some say it\u2019s Saint Nick who asks the Krampus to do his dirty work for him in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cKrampus brings onions, coals, and pain,\u201d said Susanne, who has firsthand experience with the offerings of the slithery-tongued goat demon. She\u2019s found her share of onions (she speculates that was her mother\u2019s invention) mixed in with oranges and sweets on the morning of December 6. Why? \u201cI was a wild kid, fighting with boys and ruining my \u2018cute dresses,\u2019 \u201d she explained. \u201cMaybe that was the reason for the Krampus stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"krampus\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Krampus is famous for being the punisher, but his material offerings might be construed as practical, particularly during the winter months. Who couldn\u2019t use an extra onion in the soup or more coal in the furnace? And let\u2019s not forget that he\u2019s a real ladies\u2019 devil. Sadly, this luxuriating, indulgent, party-animal side of him seems to have fallen out of fashion. My dream Krampus feature film\/biopic would encapsulate the erotic beauty of Krampuskarten.<\/em> To cast his love interest, we\u2019d do screen tests with several stars: Bettie Page (because the queen of bondage was not adverse to a little spanking and a few chains; she could be his dominatrix accomplice); Lauren Bacall (to summon the Krampus you just put your lips together and blow); and the quintessential fairy-tale heroine, the girl to break his heart\u2014Fay Wray (King Kong was mad for her) in a diaphanous gown, forever out of reach. The picture would be heroically filmed in black and white, and directed by James Whale or possibly Neil Jordan for his empathy for the vampire.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Vampire, the Krampus won\u2019t drink you, he\u2019ll have a drink with<\/em> you, and when he\u2019s entertaining a young lady, his chains and switches are purely for recreational use. Fay Wray, of course, will take one look at his horned, cloven-hoofed demonic chain-slinging majesty and faint. Lauren Bacall would be just the woman to whip him into shape, have him eating out of her hand and doing her bidding \u2026 but Bettie Page, well, she\u2019ll dress for the occasion, bring out his playful side, and have a spanking good time.<\/p>\n

The Krampus is not the one-dimensional villain the Santa lobbyists would have you believe he is. He has depth. Whatever you think about him, he will likely deliver. The Krampus has pansophical insight, superpowers if you like: maybe he uses his horns as antennae to tune in to naughty children and anyone else emitting hopeless vibes. You get the feeling the chain-draped, bell-ringing, switch-bearing, punishing sidekick to Santa can sense your despair on the wind. (When he\u2019s not relaxing and pursuing the ladies, I mean.) And by the time you hear him coming \u2026 it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Laren Stover is the author of <\/em>Pluto, Animal Lover,\u00a0<\/em>Bohemian Manifesto, <\/em>A Field Guide to Living on the Edge,<\/em> and <\/em>The Bombshell Manual of Style. She writes for the<\/em>\u00a0New York Times and the<\/em>\u00a0New York Observer and is the editor at large of <\/em>Faerie Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He’s the bad cop to Santa\u2019s good cop: we crave the Krampus\u2019s gothic, goaty intensity around the holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":919,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13633],"tags":[13504,26075,26081,1442,26078,247,26072,5398,26073,6976,10249,26079,26070,26069,26074,6353,81,26071,26077,26080,17639,26076],"class_list":["post-105516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-of-tomfoolery","tag-austria","tag-bela-lugosi","tag-bettie-page","tag-christmas","tag-fay-wray","tag-germany","tag-goats","tag-holidays","tag-jack-palance","tag-jimmy-stewart","tag-john-wayne","tag-king-kong","tag-krampen","tag-krampus","tag-krampuskarten","tag-lauren-bacall","tag-movies","tag-pan","tag-robert-mitchum","tag-romantic-leads","tag-st-nicholas","tag-the-night-of-the-hunter"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKrushing on Krampus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The gothic, goaty intensity; the weird propensity for BDSM; the serpentine tail \u2026 Krampus is the bad cop to Santa\u2019s good cop. 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