"What a marvelous holiday tradition! Nothing says 'Christmas' better than a hairy lascivious sadistic child-abusing man-goat, who beats bad children (and nubile frauleins) with switches, and in some cases, drowns them in streams, dips them in hot tar, or simply drags them straight to Hell!  Dammit, why isn't there a Krampus at every mall and shopping center in America?"

Alert reader IM sent me that missive, along with some links to celebrate Santa's Alpine doppelganger.

He adds, "At least he doesn't have the racist connotations of Santa's blackface helper in the Netherlands, Zwarte Piet." More here.

Comments

[Ian McDowell]

I've never been called an alert reader before! Technically, I'm not sure he's so much Santa's doppleganger as his lackey or servant, the one who does the dirty work so that Saint Nick's hands remain clean, although the traditions are unclear on this.

For the Christmas cards I'm sending out this year, I wrote the following verse:

Dear children, meet Der Krampus;
he's Saint Nick's hairy friend!
He knows when you've been wicked,
he knows when you have sinned!
I hope you've said your prayers
and goodbye your parents kissed,
for I fear, dear naughty children,
your names are on his list!
He will bruise your bottoms
with his heavey wooden switch,
and then he'll pop you in his sack
and drown you in a ditch!
What's that sound behind you?
What's that goatish smell?
Mein Gott, it is der Krampus
come to drag you off to Hell!

(It actually works better when I recite it aloud in a Col. Klink accent)

[David Wharton]

I hope that second video you linked will give the Jaycees some good ideas for next year's Greensboro Christmas parade.

[Beelzebubba]

the mangoat visited my nieces at my request. they tasered his mangoat ass until he had an irregular heartbeat and had to go on disability. while he was down they pulled out one of his mangoat teeth with hobby pliers....and these girls call me "uncle meany"

[Fec]

I'm buying Ian a blog for Christmas.

[Beelzebubba]

5 stars Ian

[Ian McDowell]

Fec, I need to update it, but if you click on my name you'll see it's linked to a blogger blog, rather than my MySpace page the way it was in the past.

[timbo]

In that we are mixing Perdition and the Yuletide:

May all good fellows that here agree
Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me,
And may all my enemies go to hell!
Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!
May all my enemies go to hell!
Noel! Noel!

-Hilaire Belloc, from The Four Men