The Krampusnacht tradition might provide an outlet for December’s particular pressures, such as overscheduling, overspending, and amped-up family tensions. But Rest also thinks Krampus is appealing for another reason: Through Krampus, we can experience the vicarious, instant satisfaction of doling out punishment to those deserving of it.
Krampus Is the Christmas Icon We Need—And Maybe the One We Deserve
"It’s the first time I’m wearing the dog muzzle in public. I’d been fussing with it for days in the privacy of my dining room, along with other found items: gardening knee pads, black electrical tape, cowbells snatched up on clearance (because you can never have too much cowbell).
Now, I’m wearing all that, along with an old weightlifting belt and yards of fake fur, stitched and glued into something that resembles the offspring of a Wookiee and a Highland cow. I’ve joined a mob of about a hundred characters parading down the street. The local Spielmannszug Milwaukee, a traditional German drum and bugle corps in felt and wool Alpine hats, leads the way in orderly columns. Behind them flows chaos: a coven or two of glam witches, angels in various degrees of falling, an antlered wendigo, a few Mari Lywd (the traditional Welsh singing horse skull-on-a-stick), and a pair of Santa hat-wearing hodags, the beloved cryptid of Wisconsin’s Northwoods.
As onlookers lining the sidewalks shout and cheer—and a few children cower in terror—my group brings up the rear. Following St. Nick in his resplendent velvet vestments and crimson-and-gold mitre, we are a bestial lot. Some lumber, walking sticks thudding on the pavement, while others lope or dart around the edges of the procession to swat at the crowd pressing forward for a better view. Our chains clank and jangle, and, with every step we take, the chilly air reverberates with bells, bells, bells announcing the approach of Santa’s sinister sidekick, the Krampus.
It’s the Fifth Annual Milwaukee Krampusnacht, an event that has taken over the city’s historic Brewery District. Milwaukee is a city with deep German roots, and this neighborhood, centered around the atmospheric 19th-century Pabst Brewery, with narrow streets and castellated facades, is particularly evocative of the Old World. It’s a fitting backdrop for the horde of Krampusse emerging from the shadows to mete out punishment to the naughty. Evolved from Central Europe’s pagan past and reimagined by Church elites as a kind of unholy enforcer, Krampus is now a global icon for the digital age. But what explains the ascent from obscure Alpine tradition to a 21st-century celebrity that has inspired Krampusnachten around the world? What brings people out of their warm homes, on a night when temps flirt with freezing, to stand on a sidewalk and hope to get thrashed by a masked demon? And what do the people behind the masks get out of transforming into the cool ghoul of Yule? To understand the Krampus, I must become the Krampus. . ."
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