While reading about the Krampus,
Clem had noticed quite a bit about St. Nicholas, since in the northern European
countries Krampus was usually paired with the saint, and Nicholas’ holiday was
the day after Krampusnacht. From what
she had seen, it looked as though St. Nicholas Day was kind of like “Christmas
Lite”. There were presents, but not a
lot, candy, but not a lot and there didn’t seem to be any feasting tradition,
so it was probably a lot nicer for the adults involved all around. No one had to go roasting a goose or turkey,
or baking giant hams or lasagnas. And
what kind of animal did a lasagna come from anyways?
Clem went back to one of the
websites she’d seen that described country traditions for the Feast of St.
Nicholas. It seemed that in Germany children
put their shoes outside and their parents put little gifts in them. Some websites said this was the precursor of
Christmas Stockings. Considering the
size of most kids’ feet, the fancy Christmas stockings were definitely the way
to go, from Clem’s point of view. You
could barely fit one small present in a child’s shoe, but those stretchy knit
stockings? You could fit a whole bunch
of stuff in one of those. She knew, because
the yarn lady had filled one for her last year.
It had cat toys and all sorts of things in it.
Several of the websites talked
about how St. Nicholas might come with a counterpart named Black Peter, and he
was the one who might discipline children by giving them coal if they hadn’t
been good children. It seemed like the
Krampus was a messed-up version of Black Peter, perhaps by someone who really
didn’t like children very much, but who had a lot of authority, perhaps in the church way back when, and the tradition stuck.
Clem much preferred the idea of a benevolent St. Nicholas who handed out
little gifts to good children rather than a monster who whipped bad children
and carried them off to hell. You’d have
to be pretty demented to prefer the Krampus to St. Nick, she thought to herself
and snickered.
As Clem surfed through various
websites describing the celebrations, she noticed that in a lot of them the
saint looked like a skinny Santa Claus.
As she thought that she said the name ‘Santa Claus’ in her head and
thought how it sounded kind of like Saint Nicholas. She wondered if maybe they didn’t just look
alike, maybe they’d started out the same guy, but when he moved to this country
and started eating fast food he’d gained weight, and the bennies, with their
funny accents mispronounced his name until it became Santa Claus. Clem shook her head. Humans, they don’t get anything right.
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