Special Guest Blogger: Krampus

You’d better watch out because i may be a Christmas spirit but i am more like Satan than Santa. One is a jolly rotund fellow with a fluffy white beard. The other is a menacing shaggy-haired Eastern-European monstrosity with hideous curling horns and huge red tongue. We both do carry a sack though. Not for the same reason.
I see myself as part of a carrot-and-stick approach to children’s behavior. Good kids are rewarded with lovely gifts from Father Christmas’s magic sack. Naughty kids get a visit from Krampus who stuffs them into my sack and carted off back to Krampus HQ to be punished and by that i mean eaten.
But I don't want you to think that i'm all bad, in some regions and traditions I do actually bring gifts. Okay, so they are evil gifts for horrible people, but it’s the thought that counts isn’t it? If you are an adult who despises children, I will sometimes supply such practical gifts as whips, chains and big stickswith which to punish and bludgeon the little’uns.
In many European countries, December 5th is Krampusnacht (The Night of Krampus), a sort of Halloween do-over featuring groups of often inebriated Krampuses (Krampi?) roaming the streets and frightening people.
As its name suggests, it's a gloriously extreme costume parade complete with shockingly ugly make-up and all dedicated to me.