The Krampus in America
​By Thea Wirsching

Last December, I attended a Krampus-themed craft market with my family in the Los Angeles area. I came home with a figure about the size of a traditional Christmas nutcracker, costumed entirely in faux fur, and featuring a protruding red tongue and ram’s horns emerging from his head. In the figure’s hand, a roll of tiny birch switches; swinging from his person, bells and chains; on his back, a large basket harboring a naughty child within. I set my Krampus in a place of pride on the kitchen table, alongside the other Christmas bric-a-brac, and my young son didn’t bat an eye. How on earth did we get here? How has the very pagan-appearing, bestial body of the Krampus come to rest so comfortably next to the saccharine character of Santa Claus in American pop culture, in the space of a single generation? Is Krampus simply the anti-Santa, a loveable folkloric devil who appears to help goths bridge Halloween to Christmas?  More to the point, is Krampus a brilliant commercial innovation or an authentic relic of Europe’s pagan past?

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