The morphology of mythology

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How did the protective Krampus figure become a punishing devil?

holly funk, contributer

After having written a paper in 2021 on the monster Krampus which earned me 95 per cent (and, later, an essay prize in religious studies), I decided to have the face of the figure tattooed on one of my knees to memorialize what his full story signifies.

C. J. Pannell at True Dark Tattoo did incredible work on a difficult area to tattoo, and through four sessions roughly a year ago she blessed me with both lovely conversation and incredibly skilled artwork.

A few months after the final tattoo session I was sitting down with my parents and siblings—all staunch evangelical Christians—for dinner, and my brother expressed a desire that I keep my Krampus tattoo covered around our niece to make sure she wasn’t frightened by it.

Rather than get offended I recognized that he was really saying that the image disturbed him, since our niece—hardly a year old at the time—didn’t yet have the cultural context or social conditioning to see an image like the one I have tattooed as frightening. I pointed this out and, to my surprise, my dad backed me up.

I was surprised because roughly two decades ago my dad didn’t allow one of my cousins into our home because he was wearing a Pokémon shirt. My parents raised us believing that Pokémon were inspired by demons, who they didn’t want to invite into their home. As an atheist I have drastically different views than I was raised with, and as someone who’s done research in both psychology and religious studies, I find it fascinating which images and figures people make monstrous.

Stephen T. Asma in the book On Monsters outlines how the psychological understanding of monstrosity has flipped from being embodiment-minded to environment-oriented. “Formerly we were interested in what makes a person be a monster; now we are more concerned with what makes a person seem a monster,” writes Asma.

Rather than a focus on which predispositions correlate with beings capable of unimaginable horrors, the contemporary focus is on nurture more than nature. This humanistic approach looks at how the context one is raised in can bring one into alignment with wholesome or tragic trajectories, and what can be done to redeem those who’ve come to see horrific acts as the only option for survival.

But what in the hell does this have to do with mythology, or the figure Krampus?

Simply put, Krampus is a figure who—through environmental changes—altered forms from being a beloved Alpine folk figure to a kidnapping, child-torturing, child- devouring devil. These changes weren’t due to Krampus himself or the folks who held him dear as a figure, but the Catholic church who required a foil (and lackey/goon) for Saint Nicholas.

Krampus was originally an apotropaic (protective) figure, and throughout Europe there were multiple versions of the figure ranging between Austria, the Bavarian Alps, Sardinia, Slovenia, Hungry, Germany and Switzerland among other regions. Krampus-like figures were celebrated through events like Krampusnacht and Krampuslaufe, where young men would dress up in their best Krampus-like garb, get roaringly drunk (typically on bourbon) and run about the streets letting out their pent up emotions.

For 364 days of the year these men were expected to abide by appropriate societal standards, protecting those around them and contributing to society, but on one evening (often Dec. 5, or sometime between Dec. 21 and Jan. 6) they could forego societal expectations and indulge in their impulses before again becoming upstanding citizens the following day.

In myth, after the Catholic church appropriated Krampus-like figures, there could be as many as six different Krampuses who accompanied Saint Nicholas door-to- door in a community. St. Nick would be charged with assessing whether children had been contributing to their households through doing chores and whether they had learned their prayers, and if they had he would reward them with candies, baking and dried fruit. If not, he would give the Krampuses permission to terrorize the children and the home, at the very least beating the children with switches and at most kidnapping them to drown or eat in the underworld.

Later, when the Catholic church summed all European versions of Krampus into one mythic monster and continued the conversion of him as subjected to St. Nicholas, they ironically co-opted the apotropaic feature while perverting it to their own ends. Rather than one night of debauchery a year for the men in a community to release pent- up aggression and then return as protectors of the community, there was one night a year where the St. Nick used Krampus as a goon to punish any children who did not please him.

Before I wrote my 2021 paper I had never thought about Santa as a mob boss, but the more one researches the morphology of Krampus mythology, the more that good- cop/bad-cop routine of boss and goon appears to be relevant.

Originally the idea of the Krampus figure had been an outlet for pent-up emotions, and people who grew up with the Krampusnacht and Krampuslaufe traditions weren’t taught to be afraid of Krampus until he was weaponized by the Catholic church as the punishing enforcer who makes Saint Nicholas appear the “good guy.” Similarly, my Krampus tattoo wouldn’t frighten my then-one-year-old niece who had no clue what would socially be considered monstrous, but in time she may be taught that the imagery I’ve commissioned into my skin is demonic by those who believe Krampus to be.

Krampus was predisposed to be a protective outlet, not a punishing figure, and it is only through environmental exposure and conversion to an oppressive, colonizing ideology that he came to be understood as a threat.

My Krampus tattoo signifies to me that while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, so is monstrosity. Meaning is made by those who hold it. As long as we have had heroes we have had monsters and have been developing theories in attempts to justify the qualities we posture as monstrous. If groups with myths interact, those myths will morph to reflect the political interactions of the groups which hold them.