krampus

for those of you who think christmas has always been a jolly wintertime holiday for all, then you clearly haven't been introduced to krampus, "a beast-like creature from the folklore of Alpine countries thought to punish children during the Yule season who had misbehaved." wow, how did that not make its way to america?

so if the prospect of receiving a lump of coal on christmas morning isn't enough incentive to make your children be good girls and boys, maybe you need to bring out the big guns--tell them that if they are bad, krampus will put them in a sack and carry them away to his lair. 

when i was little, i accidentally saw the beginning of "tales of the crypt" one time with the skeleton guy and was traumatized for months. i'm pretty sure that if someone had told me about krampus i would have lived in terror all of my childhood. maybe alpine children are made of tougher stuff than i was though.

i found krampus on buzzfeed. usually buzzfeed is pretty inane but sometimes they have really weird articles like this one, and you can learn interesting facts on a variety of topics, like the beasts of germanic folklore. how would i have known about krampus otherwise? thanks buzzfeed.

the little quirks in the homemade krampus costume, such as the off-center eye holes and asymmetrical horns, make the costume particularly distressing. 

that poor, poor boy. i wonder what he did to deserve a visit from krampus.

This post on Krampus is dedicated to my boy Zach.