December 14, 2023 • 45 mins
As the western world gears up for its biggest holiday, the guys dive into the strange story of Krampus: a pre-Christian, pagan entity that somehow not only survived the arrival of Christianity -- but thrived, first as a side character in Central European holiday celebrations, then went global as more and more people enjoyed exploring 'the dark side' of Christmas. Spoiler: capitalism loves a franchise.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. It's beginning to look a lot like Grampus.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Spoiler off campus.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Shout out to our shout out to our super producer,
mister Max Williams. You are Noel Brown. I am Ben
Bollen and no. Once upon a time, as you often say,
you were a wee German boy, I.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Was young, a young German boy, and I lived my
young German life and fear of crampus and raining down
holiday retribution on my small German frame.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, and you know, Gary guy, you can tell, you
can tell from our vibe, folks that this is a
holiday episode. It is that time of year again. For
thousands and thousands of years, people across the planet have
celebrated the end of seasons, the end of the winter
(01:22):
season in one way or another, and as we all know,
in the cultural West, the most popular modern celebration of
this is by far Christmas, right, the celebration of the
birth of Jesus Christ. In the US, I would say
it's an increasingly secular thing.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Oh yeah, I mean, it's like a shopping holiday, that's
what it is. But hey, it gives the much needed
cash injection to the old economy, which I guess is
not the worst thing in the world. But boy, hottie,
has ever become just kind of sickeningly commercial?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And you know, it's certainly if you are.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
One who practices a faith, you know there are like
nice Christmas Eve services and you know, more kind of
moments of let's say, reflection that can come around Christmas.
But we also know that it can be a little
bit of a difficult time for some folks. Dealing with
family can often be tough, especially if you have completely
(02:17):
different views, which is becoming more and more of the case.
And this are polarizing political climate that I think we
all live in. But one thing that really brings us
all together or tears us all apart, depending on how
you want to look at it, is Crampis.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, hates everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Well, he's kind of I would argue that he's sort
of the Batman to the Superman of Santa. They're attempting
to accomplish the same things but different ways, and you know, yeah,
the whole I really appreciate that point because even if
you don't get along with your family. The holidays can
be tough for other reasons. There are people that you miss,
(02:55):
people who've passed on. You know, there's a moment of
self reflection that I would argue goes beyond specific spiritual values.
And there's fun. You know, you see a ton of
people going out to parties, decorating trees here in the
US and abroad, giving gifts just because they enjoy the community.
There's nothing wrong with that. We do know that Christmas
(03:19):
celebrations can differ widely depending on the country or the
community you visit. Like you guys, know you see it
in Mitchell Webb or Peep Show or any of those
other UK shows where they have a Christmas holiday and
they've got like the hats, you.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Know, yeah, a little paper crowns kind of and they
have those weird little paper they look like an oversized
like piece of candy, sort of like a little present
wrapped on both ends and you pull it and it
sort of pops Christmas press.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Isn't that what it's called.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Isn't it sort of like a little popper like it
sort of makes it it shoots confetti out and all
that stuff, just you know, festive fun.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Tom Fooler, and it gets a little metal, a little
heavy metal the further east to coast.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Yeah, and and crampoos Is is definitely a very metal
type figure. We're gonna get into some various depictions of them,
but you're right in Norway, Uh, you've got you gotta
hide your brooms before you go to sleep so that
witches and evil spirits don't carry them away. Of course,
we have like the Mule Lads, which is a thing
that we've talked about previously on Regulus History. Like they're
(04:28):
basically this macabre, sort of seven Dwarf type situation. Like
I think there's like window Liquor. No, that's that's an
Aphex Twin song, but there definitely was like windows Sniffer,
doorway Sniffer.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
They're named after weirdly sausage sack.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
I think it is doorway sniffer. I remember making a
sound cue for all of them, and I remember combining
a doorway and someone sniffing stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Okay, yeah, yeah, Window Liquor should well be one of
the yule as. That is, in fact a really awesome
Effects Twins song.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And then there was like cream Curdler Goat.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I mean, well, it was a goat enthusiast.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
There was something to do with livestock, though.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
There was a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Named for specific actions, which is so weird. It's kind
of the equivalent of no offense to the hunters and
tanners in the audience. But it's like verb or occupation
as a name.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
That's Iceland. I got them, I got them up.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
Okay, so we got sheep coat Claude who harasses sheep.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
We have harasses quote unquote.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Golie Doc who hides in the gullies to sneak in
and steal milk.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
We have that's a gully. We have Stubby, who.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Is abnormally short and steals pants to eat the crust
left on them in situations. We have a spoon liquor.
He was a liquor pot scraper. I don't think that
needs to be explained to either.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
We also don't have to do the whole paper.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
We have bowl liquor. We have door slammer, a bunch.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Of the sky gobbler, sauce, swiper, window pee for.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's the one you think there it is. I'm almost
not I promise, okay, I'm not almost done. Oh I
am all right. Doorway sniffer.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
So the doorway slam door slammer and a doorway sniffer.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Okay, you could combine them like when they adapt movies.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You know, well, they love franchises to the point commercialization
and spin offs.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
And candle steelers, because the whole thing was to educate
children to not be wasteful.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Okay, so we've got Norway and Iceland. What about Japan.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
There's very oddly americanized traditions in Japan that we don't
even consider a holiday tradition over here.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's very odd.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I'm so glad you brought this up in Japan. I've
never been. I've spent time in Japan, but I've never
been during their Christmas season.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
You gotta get KFC. It's a holiday bundle like jushed up.
It's a whole what's the word like a promotional thing. Right,
it comes with a Christmas cake. It's some of the
most effective marketing in recent history, to the point where
the because you know, I just got back a little
(07:15):
while ago around the Halloween season, and already people were
placing their orders for their KFC no other except no substitutions,
their KFC Christmas meal, which comes with a Christmas cake
and even it like, I didn't know this. In Caracas.
In Venezuela, you're supposed to use roller skates to travel
(07:38):
to early morning Mass on Christmas Day, which is kind
of cool. They shut down the city streets.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Weller.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Skating is hard, it's.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
More difficult that it looks bekind to your skating enthusiast friends.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Sure, but we're not talking backwards. Really quick question that
the backtrack ever so slightly been. Is KFC popular year
round in Japan or just around the holidays?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It is popular in Japan. It has similar to turkey, right,
people eat turkey deli meat all the year round in
the United States, but fifty percent of the turkey's consumed
are consumed on Thanksgiving. So KFC has successfully commercialized this
(08:20):
and that's going to be again. Commercialization is going to
be a big, big part of this episode. As we're saying,
the further east you go closer to central Europe, you
see a more sinister, somewhat Christmas season.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, it's less about treats and more about being punished
and beaten into submission for your evil sins. No good kids.
Germany and Austria specifically is kind of where we're going
to focus today Saint Nicholas. You know, I believe he
was a bishop. You know, he was definitely like a
(08:56):
like a like a religious leader. You know, like a
lot of images of him have like wearing like a
pope hat kind of situation. So he is, of course
the purveyor of treats and gifts for a well behaved
year if you're a kid. But you know, we have
our Santa Claus, who I guess. You know, a lot
of these myths get mushed together. But the whole idea
of a coal in the stocking and no presence and
(09:18):
all of that stuff, I don't think anybody actually does that,
but it's part of the mythos. But Saint Nick doesn't
really have that. So he kind of needed a more
let's say, retribution wielding counterpart.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, he outsourced his dirty work in Central European legends
and folklore. Old Nick hires out a guy called Crampis.
Crampis is a half goat, half demon monster that punishes,
as you said, misbehaving children when the Karmic bill comes
due at Christmas time. The descriptions very regent region but
(09:57):
pretty consistently. He looks like a devil, which is a
satyr the devil. Yeah, he looks like Satan basically.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
He's got kind of curved rams horns kind of or
like goat type horns, and like you said, cloven hooves,
the sort of what do you call it, like a
like a satyr, like like the pan you know, sort
of angled legs, you know, the kind of a bend.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
In the middle weirdly outward.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Uh, yeah, like like pan pans, labyrinth kind of that vibe.
He often carries seen carrying like a sack, uh, and
a pitchfork sometimes or some other weapon like a whip
or is very sen my, honestly, he's he's a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Like that guy who beat the snot out of that
other dude in Congress. He carries around a birch branch.
In some regions he's always covered in course for uh.
He often has chains or sometimes bells or sometimes chains
with bells wrapped around his upper torso in his arms.
And so he comes to town the night before the
(11:03):
feast of Saint Nicholas. This is not a Christmas eve guy.
This is an early December guy. And if you were
hearing this today, ridiculous historians, congratulations, you have escaped Crampus.
If you are in I Love you, point out the
sack and sometimes it's like a backpack or a basket
on his back, and he has a series of punishments
(11:27):
like if you're bad, he might just spank you with
his birch branch. If you're super bad, if you're like
felonious level bad, you might end up in the sack.
What happens to those kids, anybody's guests. Rumor on the
street is he's either going to eat you or drown
you in a river or cart you off to hell.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, exactly, Like it's very much. If you've ever seen
the movie, Uh, Drag Me to Hell, it's that kind
of thing where he might actually literally come up from
the underworld and grab you by the ends pull you
down into the fiery abyss.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
For sniffing all those doorways.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So we don't know exactly where old Crampis originates from,
and we'll get to that in a second, but we
do know a little bit of the etymology. The two
big guesses are a German word and then a specific
Bavarian term.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, the German word crumping' which means claw, or the
Bavarian version, which would be crumping'. It's the spelled the same,
it just doesn't have the E at the end because
it's k r a m p n, which is a
word that loosely translates to dead or rotten, which I wasn'
familiar with.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
So yeah, it's essentially Saint Nick and his pal the
rotten claw monster with his satchel and boy birch birch
branch clawboy.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Remember, it reminds me of of a night before Christmas.
You know how the kids think he's named the Sandy Claus.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
You know, yeah, I think that's a really good point.
He's also like, because there is this ven diagram, isn't there,
especially in Western culture, between the holiday Christmas and the
idea of death right or the underworld, and and that's
(13:24):
that's where Crampus comes into play. You'll you'll see folks
arguing that he is the son of the Norse god
of the underworld and that he only became as hell.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
By the way, it was kind of just right, and
he became associated with Christmas retroactively.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
The Catholic Church was not happy about this for quite
some time.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
No, they actually thought that he was kind of encroaching
on their territory. They honest, you know, we know so
many holidays that we know of or think of as being,
you know, religion just in nature, like Easter for example,
have payan roots.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know, and the Catholic Church does not care for that.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
They find that to be totally blasphemous, you know, and
they want to do anything they can to get rid
of those connections. So they did attempt to ban the
creature entirely.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, just like covering up a couple other crimes.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
They failed.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I mean, this feels like scary stuff for a kid, right,
I mean, why does.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Christmas Church of scary stuff for a kid? Right?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Why does Christmas in Central Europe have such an edge
to it? It goes back to what we're alluding to,
religious syncretism. We've talked about this extensively on stuff they
don't want you to know. It's the phenomenon through which
different cultures, via accident or design, take previously distinct religious
beliefs and just sort of squadch them together, squatches for
(14:54):
rick and mortar fans, into something new, And sometimes it's
adopting a new practice. In other cases it's because they
couldn't like the Catholic Church totally erase previously existing beliefs.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Or it's like the invention of black metal, you know,
or like extreme types of music that you often find
in this part of the world because of pretty brutal
climates and you know, harsh conditions and also religious oppression,
you know, and just the nature of those places, in
the existence of all of these relics and these you know,
old churches and just that kind of the remnants of
(15:28):
this history, I think it really leads to a certain
type of almost rebellion, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Also, I just want to kind of jump in here
real quick just to note that I have a friend
who name's Laura Cortesy and we've changed her name to Squatch.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's all great, well, congratulations Squatch fka Laura. Also, we
have to point out this part of Europe right in general.
Now it's regarded as solidly Christian, which it has been
for thousands of years, but this was not always the case.
Human spitation in Europe dates back far far before the
(16:04):
arrival of Christian theology. So this is why experts will
argue that crampus and things like crampis are vestiges of
pre existing pagan pantheons, ideologies and rituals, all meant to
commemorate the winter solstice. And you know you can go
(16:24):
into detail with this, like in nineteen seventy five anthropologist
John J. Honigbaden. How am I dealing with that nonik
very well? Yeah, okay, this guy probably has the best
summation of what happened and how Crampis got to Christianity.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Indeed, this is what he says.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
The Saint Nicholas festival we are describing incorporates cultural elements
widely distributed in Europe, in some cases going back to
pre Christian times. Nicholas himself became popular in Germany around
the eleventh century. The feast dedicated to this patron of
children is only one winter occasion which children are the
objects of special attention, others being Marten Mass Class East
(17:09):
of the Holy Innocence. And I'm sorry, this is a
really intense sounding feast and New Year's Day. Masked devils
acting boisterously and making nuisances of themselves are known in
Germany since at least the sixteenth century. While animal masked
devils combining dreadful comic this is a German word for this.
I guess it's sort of like tragic comedy. But I
(17:30):
guess dreadful comedy is sort of like maybe a little
bit tongue in cheek, a little bit gram gignon kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
In The German word for this is sharickx lustik. Well,
I think lustik.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Refers to laughing or comedy, I believe, and shush, yeah,
shahrich is like yeah, fear or like, you know, being
afraid of something.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Let's see.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
So dreadful comic antics appeared in medieval church plays. A
large literature, much of it by European folklorists, bears on
the these subjects. Austrians in the community we studied are quite
aware of Heathen quote unquote elements being blended with Christian
elements in the Saint Nicholas customs and in other traditional
winter ceremonies. They believe Carampus derives from a pagan supernatural
(18:17):
who is assimilated to the Christian devil.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And it's a.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Long whote, but I think it's it spells it out
beautifully because crampis in and of itself, is a branding play,
you know what I mean. But like these types of
deities and these types of mischievous spirits. And like he's
to your point, Ben, and you found in the research
this masking and you know, all of these these things
(18:41):
are way back to you.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Know, Greek and Roman times.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
You know, I mean the satyr again, Pan, all of
these characters are kind of light demons.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
When Christians replace these pagan winter festivals with Christmas, the
way they did it is they said, oh, you were
already celebrating Christianity. You just didn't know what you were doing.
It's a propaganda war. It's heart and minds. And so
Crampis undergoes this rebranding, this transformation. He's associated with the devil.
(19:13):
He is placed in this subservient position to Saint Nicholas
based on an apocryphal story about the guy battling the devil.
And that's why Crampis wears chains to show that he
has been contained. And later these become bells because you know,
he jures it up a little, want to keep it festive.
And like we said, you've seen things similar folks, with
(19:35):
Greco Roman mythology being subsumed by Christianity. Shout out to
one of the best short horror stories ever, The Great
God Pan and then you see it in Satyrs, you
see it in Poseidon. That's the reason why the devil
holds a trident in a lot of things. And in
the nineteen twenties, yeah, as you mentioned, the Catholic Church
(19:56):
and a couple of affiliates in policy try to ban Crampis.
They made it illegal for this guy to show up
at Christmas or during the advent season. And fascinatingly enough,
in World War Two, fascists did something similar. They thought
Crampis was a quote creation of the social democrats. It
(20:17):
was a culture war, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Get rid of him.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
But then by the sixties, you know, it's interesting, like
how how relatively recently that is Crampis kind of made
a big old comeback in Germany and Austria. He was
once again allowed to come back, and he did so
in full force as sort of a I don't know,
it's sort of like a gimmicky kind of kitsch piece,
(20:41):
you know, folklore hottering kind of folklore and tradition, and
of course, understandably the public really dug it. On the
one hand, it was, you know, a way of connecting
with their history.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
But also it's like Halloween in December.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Man, it's so cool. They do these crampus crawls or
whatever they're called. We do them here in Atlanta, very
very popular events, and people dress up in the most
elaborate demonic you know, crampis garb and it's super fun
and creepy.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
And who doesn't love Halloween? Christmas is fine. Mash them together.
You got yourself a fine holiday.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Right, And they're still never going to be as cool
as the most famous holiday, Arbor Day. Kidding, moving on,
so next, got the double hoards for Arbor Day.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I see trees are so metal, bro, they really are.
I love the amazing amazing so uh jumping quick.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Have you guys seen the SNL sketch with Pete Davidson
and Chris Red where they rest the trees one of
the best sl sketches.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
It's really truly, truly good. I think trees are very metal.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
They just they make me think of like something from
like a like a token book, Like they're just these
wizened creatures that just are somehow and like they know
more than you and they're not telling you.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Man, check out our earlier episode. Can plants communicate on
stuff they don't want? You to know, the answer is
mind blowing. And also, you know, this reminds me too
of Christmas markets, like when I've been to Christmas market,
and yeah, in Europe, in various countries there's always still,
(22:22):
especially now, there's always kind of a Crampian element. And
it's because, yeah, it's the thing. It's because people dig
this vibe. And you know, most of the folks, most
of the kids growing up, when you hear these stories
about old Saint Nick and Crampis, you're not gonna think
of the long fraud religious history leading to this. Instead,
(22:45):
you're gonna see him as like, you know, part of
the thing, part of the KFC meal that you would
have where you in Japan and December. And there's a guy,
James Deutsch, who is a Smithsonian folk Life curator, and
he portrays it as Crampis as a way for the authorities,
the powers that be, to promote the idea of good behavior,
(23:10):
of social morays, not violating taboos, not again peeping through windows,
stealing milk or what was it, sniffing doorways.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Can't quite understand the benefit of that, one sees. It
also seems like a pretty victimless crime, you.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Know, Yeah, I don't think there's ever.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Been sniff that would be much more egregious.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Who in the thirteen hundreds walked into their cottage and
stopped at the threshold and said, hang on, this doorway's
been sniffed.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Frankly, it's probably a good bit of reconnaissance.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
You know, you sniff at someone's doorway, you could tell
if they're like cooking meth in there or something, you know,
huge missing, yeah, a whiff of natural gas.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
You know, it's a safety thing. Really.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I also love that you're pointing out to the notes
about safety and the notes about celebration, which you mentioned earlier,
the crampist crawls here in Atlanta. How do we go
about celebrating Crampis today?
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Mainly devil worship type stuff, you know, sacrificing goats and uh,
what is it called? Walking witter shins around black mirror
at midnight, you know, writing sigils on the wall and
blood things like that, right.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, yeah, super chill hallmark stuff. Yeah, it's uh, it's
it's usually going to occur on December sixth, which is
known as cramp or Crampis.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Can you do it? Yeah? Knot?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, knocked crampis note, uh, the the night of Crampis
and festivities involve exactly what you've been describing the Cramps run,
which is the cramps loaf or Crampis.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Loaf louf is to run. That's right, l a U s. Yeah,
it's funny.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I believe here we I do call it the Crampus crawl,
which presumably would be a little slower than the Crampus Run.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well, I would imagine in these things, which you can
find throughout central Europe and now to your point in
the United States, you'll see people dressed up. They're doing cosplay,
they're doing their own kind of very specific dragon con
or anime meet up, and they parade through the streets
and they try to scare civilians, try to scare bystanderds.
(25:29):
More and more often they get in trouble because a
lot of these folks doing this are New Orleans style drunk.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, have you heard of Santa Con? I have, yes, Yeah,
it just happened here the other day. And apparently that
involves getting really really wasted as well.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Great, that will always end up good.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Actually, if I remember correctly. In New York they said
one of the best things about the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Is Santa Con couldn't happen?
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:00):
No, apparently in New York it's it's an absolute menace
whole friends of mine who've lived there say, it's like,
you don't want to go outside during Santa Con.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I'm putting it on the list for a future episode.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
It's a good idea. You will get puked on by
a large man in a red suit. But yeah, no,
it's it's really cool. And a lot of these drunken
people too, potentially are like wearing really elaborate costumes, like
sometimes on stilts, you know, to try to kind of
emulate the crooked like leg thing of the of the
goat like demon figure.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I mean, here Atlanta, people take it really seriously.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Also, of course we're at home with Dragon Con, so
there's a lot of cosplay, you know, hardcore folks around here.
But in Gross on December first, the Crampus Run was
attended by more than thirty thousand people. And starting in
the late twentieth century, Crampus Run started to become super
popular in Germany and Austria and then it kind of
(26:55):
spread right, it spread especially you can see the inflow.
It's in pop culture. There's actually I was watching a
few YouTube videos it's about the history of Grampus earlier,
and there was one that listed off way more Crampus
movies than I was aware of.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
There's one called The Mother Crampis and.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
It really looks like a really schlocky, you know, just
just slasher kind of gore fest. But the movie Crampus,
to me, is like a modern day Gremlins. I think
it's really cool. And Ben you pointed out another sort
of Crampus esque movie out of I want.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
To say, Norway watch it? Did you haven't seen him?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
But putting in on my list for for Christmas viewing
along with Crampus, which I think really is a kind
of along with Home Alone and Gremlins. One is technically
a Christmas movie that's places during Christmas. It's really really good,
you know, back in the days of really good practical effects.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Crampis the movie largely uses practical effects except when there's
wide shots of him, like bounding over buildings, but it's
he's always in the shadows, which I think is the
best way to use CGI is when you don't like
show it too and that's always the best way to
kind of have a monster when you don't have to
look at it and get tired of it.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Hitchcock was right, you know, it's the monster off the screen.
Let people's imaginations do the special effect.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Even in Jaws, the fact that Shark wouldn't freaking work
ended up being a feature and not a bug because
it forced Spielberg to have to like be really creative
about how he shot it. And I think the Shark
is only on screen for like four minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Similar to Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Labs,
both of which clearly are based on the pre Christian
traditions that led to Crampis.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Think about it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Question, don't think about it too much, but so okay,
December sixth, the morning after Crampis Night is Saint Nicholas Day,
And if you're a kid in places that celebrate this,
this is the morning where you go outside of your door,
whether that's your front door or the door to your bedroom,
(28:54):
and you check your shoe or your boot that you
left out previously, and that's like you or that. That
is the moment where you get your grade for the year.
Did you get presents in your shoe or did you
get a rod?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
What kind of rod are we talking here?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Like they kind of would beat people with, like in
a shoe. I guess they just I guess as soon
as you open the door would.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Isn't the person who's gonna use the rod to beat crampis?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I think it's like a horsehead and the bed thing
from Godfather.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
It's threat a portent of things to come, even though
I think that might be a little redundant.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
It's funny though.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
We were talking off air about Bell Schnickel, which is
another sort of punitive Christmas imp I guess, And I
just remember in the scene in the office where Dwight
portrays Best Schnickel and he's all about whipping you with
reeds as well, but he goes, have you been impish
or admirable? And then like Jim's like you mean like
(29:55):
naughty or an ie? Like, no, this is Best Snickel,
nothing like said.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Right, right, and neither is Pierre Noel, neither is uh
Sa Pete and the various things.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Santa has a lot of companions, and they're more edgy
than the Coca Cola company led us to believe when
they created the modern vision.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Of Santa Say, marketing sanitizes history Ben santaitizes.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, so thank you, Max, thank you. I am going
to pretend those are two thumbs up. Thank you, sir,
thank you. So here's the riverside. Emojis don't work for me.
We don't have the right os for it.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Man, it worked for everybody else.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
So we got to note that in general, just to
be clear, the majority of the population is not concerned.
You know, they don't think anybody's actually going to get
kidnapped or eaten or drowned in a river or sent
to the nether world. It's a fun tradition. And so
now we have to ask why why did crampis survive
(31:02):
ancient pre Christian days, transform into a controversial Christmas cameo,
and then suddenly become super popular. Were Nola's not blowing
smoke here? There's a big crampus event every year in Atlanta, Georgia,
and no one's like, well, here's what happened when Christianity
(31:23):
expanded into Central Europe. They're like, dude, check out my mask.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Bro oh, one hundred scent and a lot of these things.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
You know, of course, we're kind of created for very
utilitarian reasons, Like I would argue that the and I
think Max mentioned in the Yule Lads were created during
a time of mega scarcity, where like these things like
candles and you know, like this yogurt and these staples
of existence were incredibly precious and hard to come by,
(31:51):
and if you wasted them even a little bit, you
could legitimately be putting your family's life at risk. So
these these were like designed to you know, the crap
out of kids at the point where they would never
leave the candle burning too long, you know, yes, their ski.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Right right, the taste of butter and so on. So
there is one, at least one milestone moment for Crampis
that expands this popularity. It's the eighteen nineties. The postcard
industry experiences a huge boom. Everybody is sending postcards the
(32:28):
way people were sending tweets back in what twenty ten
or something, and on the way like it started out
by sending a happy Holidays card, an old Saint nick card,
you know, wishing you the best, hope you find some
oranges in your socc or whatever was the big deal
at the time. And then someone figured out they could
(32:52):
make holiday cards that were crampis oriented. There's a German
word for this.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
This is a great rate where German is so good
at encompassing complex concepts and overly complex snapping words, just
washing it together. Oh yeah, I give give it, give
it a good squash. This one would be Crampus carton.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Edgy Christmas card. Yeah, edgy Christmas cards. It's the stuff
your cool aunt would send you.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Some of these were a little racing. They started to
depict Crampus as sort of a bit of a horny boy,
you know, with that long snakelike tongue and sometimes doing
some naughty stuff with ladies.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
And and that's putting aside the regular baseline of him
actively kidnapping and possibly eating children. Uh.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
I think I saw one where he had a child skewered,
like the carcass of a child skewered on his pitchfork.
So these really did lean into These were almost more
kind of blue type car like you said, like your
cool aunt would have like sort of like nudy playing
cards or something like that.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Right, they're violating or they're interrogating social taboos, right, and
they're also popularizing this idea. So now, if you are
someone who is traveling the continent and you want to
send a car to someone who doesn't live in Central Europe.
You're sending the coolest card you can find. All of
(34:24):
a sudden they know about Crampis. Crampis goes viral in
an analog way, and these cards are crazy to your point.
You can look them up and you can see a
lot of really weird stuff, and part of the appeal
may also be psychological. Antonio carniiro spoke with National Geographic
(34:46):
about this, and he said, this is a way for
people to get in touch with their animalistic side. Look
at these dual personalities, right, you put on a mask,
just like the Internet today. You put on a mask
and all the sudden, it's no longer you.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Yeah, I mean it really is like Halloween at Christmas. Yeah,
well that sounds great to me. But now should we
get to the masks of it all?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Do it? Because they are very particular and then very interesting?
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
So the mask are a seasonal industry in Central Europe.
Think about it this way. If you're in the United
States right before, right before Halloween, excuse me, you'll see
a bunch of disused department stores transform into spirit Halloween
stores and they become this seasonal cottage industry, or you
(35:38):
know how meet and greets with Santa pop up starting
in November. Great school kids still work on their own
homemade Crampis costumes, and I thought this was weirdly wholesome.
Some of those costumes, if they're good enough, they get
tucked away for the next year.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Totally.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
I remember distinctly when I went to actual job in
kindergarten making a lot of paper mache masks. It's a
very popular thing, and I distinctly remember, Uh, that's the
first time I was exposed to the concept of paper mache.
And we would like you would build it around a
balloon and then you'd pop the balloon and then it
would give you this like shell, and then you could
(36:19):
cut the bottom out and then you could wear it
on your head. You'd make these almost then you cut
the eyes in the mouth out. Now that I'm thinking
about it, that is a very German kind of tradition.
You don't people don't do paper mache as much around here.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
It's so cool though. Papers is awesome, and that's awesome
that you were doing this as well. Do you uh,
did you hold on to the mask after you've made it.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
No, I didn't, but I do distinctly remember my kindergarten
teacher's name was Frau Neuhause, which means miss new House,
and I was. It was right before we moved to
the States, and I think I was going back a
few times and coming back and she really wanted me
to bring a bought a finger bass because they did
not have butterfinger bars in Germany at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
And I believe I obliged that.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
She actually reached out to me after my mom passed
out of nowhere on Instagram and it was the sweetest thing.
I hadn't thought about her in ages, and she reached
out saying that she had found out about that about
a year later.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I love that moment.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
I think they probably have butter fingers over there now,
but at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
It's sort of like now we get kinder, you know,
over here, but there was a time where we did
not get there. They're not the real kinder though they
so now that's not entirely true. The eggs, of course,
are different because choking hazards, right, But that's what I'm
be the ones with the white chocolate on the inside.
But you can get those as bar the bar versus.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, I had the kinder bar, but it's they call
them kindred Joy now kinder Joy at Tot Toys. It's
more of a dipper than an egg. It is, it's
it is nothing the same, but it's gone global, just
like Crampis and Crampis like, why did this guy become
so pop popular? I'll be honest with you, A lot
(38:02):
of folks agree with this. It's capitalism. Oh yeah, commodification.
Capitalism loves a franchise, loves us spin off. There's a
reason there are so many Marvel movies, so many comic books,
so many Pokemon. So Crampis is this pop culture phenomenon
for people who want to celebrate the Yuletide season in
(38:24):
non traditional ways. We talked about these Crampis parties and
Crampus crawls in Atlanta, but things like this occur in Washington,
d C. In New Orleans, in pretty much any American
city of a certain size.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
At this point, one hundred percent, and it does appear
to be continuing to pay dividends because it's not like,
does it reached the level of saturation of say, Marvel
movies or Pokemon. You know, you have like one Crampis movie,
and I heard there's going to be a Crampus movie sequel.
But let's try to keep Crampus out of a full
(38:59):
cinemat universe. You know, it kind of sucks the joy
out of it a little bit, sort of cheapens it.
You know, I've got marble fatigue, my friends.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, it's not Crampus if it's every day, right, it's
not Christmas if it's every day. I mean, but there's
a lot of merch and that merch still gets sold
year round, collectible horns, figurines, chocolates across any kind of
Christmas market. I'm sure you can go We didn't check
this yet, but I'm sure you can go online to
your ebays or your amazons and find any number of
(39:29):
Crampist related merchandise. And the question is if we are
commodifying this or cramp modifying Yeah, okay, all.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Right, well, if we sail down, the man's the guy.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
But if we're doing that, to your point, are we
not turning this ancient relic of folklore into yet another kitchy,
soulless sort of money grab. You know, when does the
crampest fatigue set in.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
That's what I'm hoping we can avoid.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I think Grabus is really cool and uh, I've only
seen the Crams movie a couple of times, and I
am very excited to officially add it to my holiday
viewing list.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
I'm also so excited to hear what you guys think
about rare exports.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I know very little about it, which I'm excited about.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I don't want to spoil it's so weird, dude. H.
We also, uh, we also want to give a moment
of honor to Santa's other companions. Turns out Old Saint
Nick globally is a lot less like a single act
and a lot more like the Wu Tang clan. He's
got companions all around Europe.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, And we talked a little bit about Shavata pet
Shavata Peta in the Netherlands, who is sort of a
sidekick of I think I think bell Snickel maybe like
I think that's right. Results vary, but he is sort
of a court jesterly fellow, but often in full blackface, right.
(41:03):
And I think we talked about this not terribly long ago.
Maybe it was a year ago around Christmas, but I
think that some places in Europe have sort of started
to distance themselves from.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
The whole Schwarza peint thing. But it used to be
as common as can.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
Be to see, you know, very airy and European types
dressed up in this motley, you know, with the full
blackface on.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Kind of like Bell Shickle, which you mentioned earlier. You know,
he has a face smeared with charcoal and we're talking
off air and I asked, you, guys, how much charcoal
can someone smear like that before it's officially blackface.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Well that's a good point. I believe Swartza pat is
meant to be covered in soot.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
I believe, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
It was very much more a coal based, chimney based
economy at the time. There's also Servant Rupert in German folklore,
Paranoel Father Christmas in French folklore. It goes on and on,
and you guys, honestly, Crampus is the coolest. We hope
everybody is having a great holiday. We hope that we
(42:16):
hope that you enjoy this deeper lore of Christmas. Check out,
as you said, Noel, check out our Your Lads episode.
Check out the origins of Christmas on stuff they don't
want you to know, and we wanted to make good
on something we mentioned in a previous episode. Oh yeah,
we talked. We talked Noel and Max and Alex sirkeez
(42:39):
here too. We talked about maybe reading a couple of reviews.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Oh yeah, and hopefully this will entice the rest of
you to leave, leave some some nice ones. Apparently some
people think we're like the woke police or something out there.
Let's let's push all those down the queue, because we
make no apologies for being human beings with a perspective,
and I don't think we're overtly political or anything.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
But it's just crazy how triggered some people get just
by like people.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Having opinions and being human. I mean, that's just how
it is. But yeah, please Ben, I would love to
maybe read one apiece.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah, yeah, here, why don't you? This is one of
my This one we found that I thought was nice.
And we're keeping these both very short. But why you
do the first one?
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Then this one comes from doctor say, they say, great show,
recommended four stars.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Where's the fifth star? Doctor say? What did we do
to hurt you?
Speaker 4 (43:35):
I really enjoy the style interwoven with the topics are
asides quasi related banter. We specialize in and tangents that
add color to the conversation, where nothing if not colorful.
Thanks doctor Say, and we.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Have one from Squeak eight seven four to oh one
informative and lighthearted five stars.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Thank you Squeak.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I have been listening for a long time. I enjoy
history and enjoy information with a light hearted banter.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Well, yeah, if you want to leave a pleasant review
on iTunes or podbey or whatever, please do. We might
share a few more of these moving forward. If you
want to have your name and comment right on the show,
that's a surefire way to do it.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Big big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Big big thanks to our returning guest Alex the Circumstance
Circa Alex, howd we do? Did we convert you to Crampus?
Speaker 2 (44:26):
I think I got to check out that movie that
you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
I might have to watch that later tonight.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Mm hmm. Get the spirits excited to see it as well.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Huge thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the Quist sort of a
Crampis type fellow, a little more of a Bellsnickel. I
would say, oh, shots fired, Yeah, and I once saw
him get his wigs snatched off and he put it
on backwards too. There was a reference to the previous episode.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We're doing callbacks, guys. Big big thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed this track. Big thanks to Eves Jeffcoat. Christopher
hasiotis here in spirit. I am a research associate for
this episode. We can't wait to explore more ridiculous history
with you, folks. We've got gosh no, We've got a
lot of things on the docket that I think are
(45:13):
I don't know. Every time I read like our secret
treasure troph of stuff we're working on, I get so excited.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
I'm excited to start digging in on some of them myself.
It's going to be a fun new year. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. It's beginning to look a lot like Grampus.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Spoiler off campus.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Shout out to our shout out to our super producer,
mister Max Williams. You are Noel Brown. I am Ben
Bollen and no. Once upon a time, as you often say,
you were a wee German boy, I.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Was young, a young German boy, and I lived my
young German life and fear of crampus and raining down
holiday retribution on my small German frame.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yeah, and you know, Gary guy, you can tell, you
can tell from our vibe, folks that this is a
holiday episode. It is that time of year again. For
thousands and thousands of years, people across the planet have
celebrated the end of seasons, the end of the winter
(01:22):
season in one way or another, and as we all know,
in the cultural West, the most popular modern celebration of
this is by far Christmas, right, the celebration of the
birth of Jesus Christ. In the US, I would say
it's an increasingly secular thing.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Oh yeah, I mean, it's like a shopping holiday, that's
what it is. But hey, it gives the much needed
cash injection to the old economy, which I guess is
not the worst thing in the world. But boy, hottie,
has ever become just kind of sickeningly commercial?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And you know, it's certainly if you are.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
One who practices a faith, you know there are like
nice Christmas Eve services and you know, more kind of
moments of let's say, reflection that can come around Christmas.
But we also know that it can be a little
bit of a difficult time for some folks. Dealing with
family can often be tough, especially if you have completely
(02:17):
different views, which is becoming more and more of the case.
And this are polarizing political climate that I think we
all live in. But one thing that really brings us
all together or tears us all apart, depending on how
you want to look at it, is Crampis.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, hates everybody.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Well, he's kind of I would argue that he's sort
of the Batman to the Superman of Santa. They're attempting
to accomplish the same things but different ways, and you know, yeah,
the whole I really appreciate that point because even if
you don't get along with your family. The holidays can
be tough for other reasons. There are people that you miss,
(02:55):
people who've passed on. You know, there's a moment of
self reflection that I would argue goes beyond specific spiritual values.
And there's fun. You know, you see a ton of
people going out to parties, decorating trees here in the
US and abroad, giving gifts just because they enjoy the community.
There's nothing wrong with that. We do know that Christmas
(03:19):
celebrations can differ widely depending on the country or the
community you visit. Like you guys, know you see it
in Mitchell Webb or Peep Show or any of those
other UK shows where they have a Christmas holiday and
they've got like the hats, you.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Know, yeah, a little paper crowns kind of and they
have those weird little paper they look like an oversized
like piece of candy, sort of like a little present
wrapped on both ends and you pull it and it
sort of pops Christmas press.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Isn't that what it's called.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Isn't it sort of like a little popper like it
sort of makes it it shoots confetti out and all
that stuff, just you know, festive fun.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Tom Fooler, and it gets a little metal, a little
heavy metal the further east to coast.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Yeah, and and crampoos Is is definitely a very metal
type figure. We're gonna get into some various depictions of them,
but you're right in Norway, Uh, you've got you gotta
hide your brooms before you go to sleep so that
witches and evil spirits don't carry them away. Of course,
we have like the Mule Lads, which is a thing
that we've talked about previously on Regulus History. Like they're
(04:28):
basically this macabre, sort of seven Dwarf type situation. Like
I think there's like window Liquor. No, that's that's an
Aphex Twin song, but there definitely was like windows Sniffer,
doorway Sniffer.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
They're named after weirdly sausage sack.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
I think it is doorway sniffer. I remember making a
sound cue for all of them, and I remember combining
a doorway and someone sniffing stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Okay, yeah, yeah, Window Liquor should well be one of
the yule as. That is, in fact a really awesome
Effects Twins song.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And then there was like cream Curdler Goat.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I mean, well, it was a goat enthusiast.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
There was something to do with livestock, though.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
There was a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Named for specific actions, which is so weird. It's kind
of the equivalent of no offense to the hunters and
tanners in the audience. But it's like verb or occupation
as a name.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
That's Iceland. I got them, I got them up.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
Okay, so we got sheep coat Claude who harasses sheep.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
We have harasses quote unquote.
Speaker 5 (05:36):
Golie Doc who hides in the gullies to sneak in
and steal milk.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
We have that's a gully. We have Stubby, who.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
Is abnormally short and steals pants to eat the crust
left on them in situations. We have a spoon liquor.
He was a liquor pot scraper. I don't think that
needs to be explained to either.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
We also don't have to do the whole paper.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
We have bowl liquor. We have door slammer, a bunch.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Of the sky gobbler, sauce, swiper, window pee for.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's the one you think there it is. I'm almost
not I promise, okay, I'm not almost done. Oh I
am all right. Doorway sniffer.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
So the doorway slam door slammer and a doorway sniffer.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Okay, you could combine them like when they adapt movies.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You know, well, they love franchises to the point commercialization
and spin offs.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
And candle steelers, because the whole thing was to educate
children to not be wasteful.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Okay, so we've got Norway and Iceland. What about Japan.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
There's very oddly americanized traditions in Japan that we don't
even consider a holiday tradition over here.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's very odd.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I'm so glad you brought this up in Japan. I've
never been. I've spent time in Japan, but I've never
been during their Christmas season.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
You gotta get KFC. It's a holiday bundle like jushed up.
It's a whole what's the word like a promotional thing. Right,
it comes with a Christmas cake. It's some of the
most effective marketing in recent history, to the point where
the because you know, I just got back a little
(07:15):
while ago around the Halloween season, and already people were
placing their orders for their KFC no other except no substitutions,
their KFC Christmas meal, which comes with a Christmas cake
and even it like, I didn't know this. In Caracas.
In Venezuela, you're supposed to use roller skates to travel
(07:38):
to early morning Mass on Christmas Day, which is kind
of cool. They shut down the city streets.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Weller.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Skating is hard, it's.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
More difficult that it looks bekind to your skating enthusiast friends.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Sure, but we're not talking backwards. Really quick question that
the backtrack ever so slightly been. Is KFC popular year
round in Japan or just around the holidays?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It is popular in Japan. It has similar to turkey, right,
people eat turkey deli meat all the year round in
the United States, but fifty percent of the turkey's consumed
are consumed on Thanksgiving. So KFC has successfully commercialized this
(08:20):
and that's going to be again. Commercialization is going to
be a big, big part of this episode. As we're saying,
the further east you go closer to central Europe, you
see a more sinister, somewhat Christmas season.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, it's less about treats and more about being punished
and beaten into submission for your evil sins. No good kids.
Germany and Austria specifically is kind of where we're going
to focus today Saint Nicholas. You know, I believe he
was a bishop. You know, he was definitely like a
(08:56):
like a like a religious leader. You know, like a
lot of images of him have like wearing like a
pope hat kind of situation. So he is, of course
the purveyor of treats and gifts for a well behaved
year if you're a kid. But you know, we have
our Santa Claus, who I guess. You know, a lot
of these myths get mushed together. But the whole idea
of a coal in the stocking and no presence and
(09:18):
all of that stuff, I don't think anybody actually does that,
but it's part of the mythos. But Saint Nick doesn't
really have that. So he kind of needed a more
let's say, retribution wielding counterpart.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Yeah, he outsourced his dirty work in Central European legends
and folklore. Old Nick hires out a guy called Crampis.
Crampis is a half goat, half demon monster that punishes,
as you said, misbehaving children when the Karmic bill comes
due at Christmas time. The descriptions very regent region but
(09:57):
pretty consistently. He looks like a devil, which is a
satyr the devil. Yeah, he looks like Satan basically.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
He's got kind of curved rams horns kind of or
like goat type horns, and like you said, cloven hooves,
the sort of what do you call it, like a
like a satyr, like like the pan you know, sort
of angled legs, you know, the kind of a bend.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
In the middle weirdly outward.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Uh, yeah, like like pan pans, labyrinth kind of that vibe.
He often carries seen carrying like a sack, uh, and
a pitchfork sometimes or some other weapon like a whip
or is very sen my, honestly, he's he's a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Like that guy who beat the snot out of that
other dude in Congress. He carries around a birch branch.
In some regions he's always covered in course for uh.
He often has chains or sometimes bells or sometimes chains
with bells wrapped around his upper torso in his arms.
And so he comes to town the night before the
(11:03):
feast of Saint Nicholas. This is not a Christmas eve guy.
This is an early December guy. And if you were
hearing this today, ridiculous historians, congratulations, you have escaped Crampus.
If you are in I Love you, point out the
sack and sometimes it's like a backpack or a basket
on his back, and he has a series of punishments
(11:27):
like if you're bad, he might just spank you with
his birch branch. If you're super bad, if you're like
felonious level bad, you might end up in the sack.
What happens to those kids, anybody's guests. Rumor on the
street is he's either going to eat you or drown
you in a river or cart you off to hell.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, exactly, Like it's very much. If you've ever seen
the movie, Uh, Drag Me to Hell, it's that kind
of thing where he might actually literally come up from
the underworld and grab you by the ends pull you
down into the fiery abyss.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
For sniffing all those doorways.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So we don't know exactly where old Crampis originates from,
and we'll get to that in a second, but we
do know a little bit of the etymology. The two
big guesses are a German word and then a specific
Bavarian term.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, the German word crumping' which means claw, or the
Bavarian version, which would be crumping'. It's the spelled the same,
it just doesn't have the E at the end because
it's k r a m p n, which is a
word that loosely translates to dead or rotten, which I wasn'
familiar with.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
So yeah, it's essentially Saint Nick and his pal the
rotten claw monster with his satchel and boy birch birch
branch clawboy.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Remember, it reminds me of of a night before Christmas.
You know how the kids think he's named the Sandy Claus.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
You know, yeah, I think that's a really good point.
He's also like, because there is this ven diagram, isn't there,
especially in Western culture, between the holiday Christmas and the
idea of death right or the underworld, and and that's
(13:24):
that's where Crampus comes into play. You'll you'll see folks
arguing that he is the son of the Norse god
of the underworld and that he only became as hell.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
By the way, it was kind of just right, and
he became associated with Christmas retroactively.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
The Catholic Church was not happy about this for quite
some time.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
No, they actually thought that he was kind of encroaching
on their territory. They honest, you know, we know so
many holidays that we know of or think of as being,
you know, religion just in nature, like Easter for example,
have payan roots.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
You know, and the Catholic Church does not care for that.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
They find that to be totally blasphemous, you know, and
they want to do anything they can to get rid
of those connections. So they did attempt to ban the
creature entirely.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, just like covering up a couple other crimes.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
They failed.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I mean, this feels like scary stuff for a kid, right,
I mean, why does.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Christmas Church of scary stuff for a kid? Right?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Why does Christmas in Central Europe have such an edge
to it? It goes back to what we're alluding to,
religious syncretism. We've talked about this extensively on stuff they
don't want you to know. It's the phenomenon through which
different cultures, via accident or design, take previously distinct religious
beliefs and just sort of squadch them together, squatches for
(14:54):
rick and mortar fans, into something new, And sometimes it's
adopting a new practice. In other cases it's because they
couldn't like the Catholic Church totally erase previously existing beliefs.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Or it's like the invention of black metal, you know,
or like extreme types of music that you often find
in this part of the world because of pretty brutal
climates and you know, harsh conditions and also religious oppression,
you know, and just the nature of those places, in
the existence of all of these relics and these you know,
old churches and just that kind of the remnants of
(15:28):
this history, I think it really leads to a certain
type of almost rebellion, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I think it's interesting.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Also, I just want to kind of jump in here
real quick just to note that I have a friend
who name's Laura Cortesy and we've changed her name to Squatch.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That's all great, well, congratulations Squatch fka Laura. Also, we
have to point out this part of Europe right in general.
Now it's regarded as solidly Christian, which it has been
for thousands of years, but this was not always the case.
Human spitation in Europe dates back far far before the
(16:04):
arrival of Christian theology. So this is why experts will
argue that crampus and things like crampis are vestiges of
pre existing pagan pantheons, ideologies and rituals, all meant to
commemorate the winter solstice. And you know you can go
(16:24):
into detail with this, like in nineteen seventy five anthropologist
John J. Honigbaden. How am I dealing with that nonik
very well? Yeah, okay, this guy probably has the best
summation of what happened and how Crampis got to Christianity.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Indeed, this is what he says.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
The Saint Nicholas festival we are describing incorporates cultural elements
widely distributed in Europe, in some cases going back to
pre Christian times. Nicholas himself became popular in Germany around
the eleventh century. The feast dedicated to this patron of
children is only one winter occasion which children are the
objects of special attention, others being Marten Mass Class East
(17:09):
of the Holy Innocence. And I'm sorry, this is a
really intense sounding feast and New Year's Day. Masked devils
acting boisterously and making nuisances of themselves are known in
Germany since at least the sixteenth century. While animal masked
devils combining dreadful comic this is a German word for this.
I guess it's sort of like tragic comedy. But I
(17:30):
guess dreadful comedy is sort of like maybe a little
bit tongue in cheek, a little bit gram gignon kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
In The German word for this is sharickx lustik. Well,
I think lustik.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Refers to laughing or comedy, I believe, and shush, yeah,
shahrich is like yeah, fear or like, you know, being
afraid of something.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Let's see.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
So dreadful comic antics appeared in medieval church plays. A
large literature, much of it by European folklorists, bears on
the these subjects. Austrians in the community we studied are quite
aware of Heathen quote unquote elements being blended with Christian
elements in the Saint Nicholas customs and in other traditional
winter ceremonies. They believe Carampus derives from a pagan supernatural
(18:17):
who is assimilated to the Christian devil.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And it's a.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Long whote, but I think it's it spells it out
beautifully because crampis in and of itself, is a branding play,
you know what I mean. But like these types of
deities and these types of mischievous spirits. And like he's
to your point, Ben, and you found in the research
this masking and you know, all of these these things
(18:41):
are way back to you.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Know, Greek and Roman times.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
You know, I mean the satyr again, Pan, all of
these characters are kind of light demons.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
When Christians replace these pagan winter festivals with Christmas, the
way they did it is they said, oh, you were
already celebrating Christianity. You just didn't know what you were doing.
It's a propaganda war. It's heart and minds. And so
Crampis undergoes this rebranding, this transformation. He's associated with the devil.
(19:13):
He is placed in this subservient position to Saint Nicholas
based on an apocryphal story about the guy battling the devil.
And that's why Crampis wears chains to show that he
has been contained. And later these become bells because you know,
he jures it up a little, want to keep it festive.
And like we said, you've seen things similar folks, with
(19:35):
Greco Roman mythology being subsumed by Christianity. Shout out to
one of the best short horror stories ever, The Great
God Pan and then you see it in Satyrs, you
see it in Poseidon. That's the reason why the devil
holds a trident in a lot of things. And in
the nineteen twenties, yeah, as you mentioned, the Catholic Church
(19:56):
and a couple of affiliates in policy try to ban Crampis.
They made it illegal for this guy to show up
at Christmas or during the advent season. And fascinatingly enough,
in World War Two, fascists did something similar. They thought
Crampis was a quote creation of the social democrats. It
(20:17):
was a culture war, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Get rid of him.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
But then by the sixties, you know, it's interesting, like
how how relatively recently that is Crampis kind of made
a big old comeback in Germany and Austria. He was
once again allowed to come back, and he did so
in full force as sort of a I don't know,
it's sort of like a gimmicky kind of kitsch piece,
(20:41):
you know, folklore hottering kind of folklore and tradition, and
of course, understandably the public really dug it. On the
one hand, it was, you know, a way of connecting
with their history.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
But also it's like Halloween in December.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Man, it's so cool. They do these crampus crawls or
whatever they're called. We do them here in Atlanta, very
very popular events, and people dress up in the most
elaborate demonic you know, crampis garb and it's super fun
and creepy.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
And who doesn't love Halloween? Christmas is fine. Mash them together.
You got yourself a fine holiday.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Right, And they're still never going to be as cool
as the most famous holiday, Arbor Day. Kidding, moving on,
so next, got the double hoards for Arbor Day.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
I see trees are so metal, bro, they really are.
I love the amazing amazing so uh jumping quick.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Have you guys seen the SNL sketch with Pete Davidson
and Chris Red where they rest the trees one of
the best sl sketches.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
It's really truly, truly good. I think trees are very metal.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
They just they make me think of like something from
like a like a token book, Like they're just these
wizened creatures that just are somehow and like they know
more than you and they're not telling you.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Man, check out our earlier episode. Can plants communicate on
stuff they don't want? You to know, the answer is
mind blowing. And also, you know, this reminds me too
of Christmas markets, like when I've been to Christmas market,
and yeah, in Europe, in various countries there's always still,
(22:22):
especially now, there's always kind of a Crampian element. And
it's because, yeah, it's the thing. It's because people dig
this vibe. And you know, most of the folks, most
of the kids growing up, when you hear these stories
about old Saint Nick and Crampis, you're not gonna think
of the long fraud religious history leading to this. Instead,
(22:45):
you're gonna see him as like, you know, part of
the thing, part of the KFC meal that you would
have where you in Japan and December. And there's a guy,
James Deutsch, who is a Smithsonian folk Life curator, and
he portrays it as Crampis as a way for the authorities,
the powers that be, to promote the idea of good behavior,
(23:10):
of social morays, not violating taboos, not again peeping through windows,
stealing milk or what was it, sniffing doorways.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Can't quite understand the benefit of that, one sees. It
also seems like a pretty victimless crime, you.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Know, Yeah, I don't think there's ever.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Been sniff that would be much more egregious.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Who in the thirteen hundreds walked into their cottage and
stopped at the threshold and said, hang on, this doorway's
been sniffed.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Frankly, it's probably a good bit of reconnaissance.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
You know, you sniff at someone's doorway, you could tell
if they're like cooking meth in there or something, you know,
huge missing, yeah, a whiff of natural gas.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
You know, it's a safety thing. Really.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I also love that you're pointing out to the notes
about safety and the notes about celebration, which you mentioned earlier,
the crampist crawls here in Atlanta. How do we go
about celebrating Crampis today?
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Mainly devil worship type stuff, you know, sacrificing goats and uh,
what is it called? Walking witter shins around black mirror
at midnight, you know, writing sigils on the wall and
blood things like that, right.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, yeah, super chill hallmark stuff. Yeah, it's uh, it's
it's usually going to occur on December sixth, which is
known as cramp or Crampis.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Can you do it? Yeah? Knot?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, knocked crampis note, uh, the the night of Crampis
and festivities involve exactly what you've been describing the Cramps run,
which is the cramps loaf or Crampis.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Loaf louf is to run. That's right, l a U s. Yeah,
it's funny.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
I believe here we I do call it the Crampus crawl,
which presumably would be a little slower than the Crampus Run.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well, I would imagine in these things, which you can
find throughout central Europe and now to your point in
the United States, you'll see people dressed up. They're doing cosplay,
they're doing their own kind of very specific dragon con
or anime meet up, and they parade through the streets
and they try to scare civilians, try to scare bystanderds.
(25:29):
More and more often they get in trouble because a
lot of these folks doing this are New Orleans style drunk.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, have you heard of Santa Con? I have, yes, Yeah,
it just happened here the other day. And apparently that
involves getting really really wasted as well.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Great, that will always end up good.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Actually, if I remember correctly. In New York they said
one of the best things about the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Is Santa Con couldn't happen?
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (26:00):
No, apparently in New York it's it's an absolute menace
whole friends of mine who've lived there say, it's like,
you don't want to go outside during Santa Con.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I'm putting it on the list for a future episode.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
It's a good idea. You will get puked on by
a large man in a red suit. But yeah, no,
it's it's really cool. And a lot of these drunken
people too, potentially are like wearing really elaborate costumes, like
sometimes on stilts, you know, to try to kind of
emulate the crooked like leg thing of the of the
goat like demon figure.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I mean, here Atlanta, people take it really seriously.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Also, of course we're at home with Dragon Con, so
there's a lot of cosplay, you know, hardcore folks around here.
But in Gross on December first, the Crampus Run was
attended by more than thirty thousand people. And starting in
the late twentieth century, Crampus Run started to become super
popular in Germany and Austria and then it kind of
(26:55):
spread right, it spread especially you can see the inflow.
It's in pop culture. There's actually I was watching a
few YouTube videos it's about the history of Grampus earlier,
and there was one that listed off way more Crampus
movies than I was aware of.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
There's one called The Mother Crampis and.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
It really looks like a really schlocky, you know, just
just slasher kind of gore fest. But the movie Crampus,
to me, is like a modern day Gremlins. I think
it's really cool. And Ben you pointed out another sort
of Crampus esque movie out of I want.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
To say, Norway watch it? Did you haven't seen him?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
But putting in on my list for for Christmas viewing
along with Crampus, which I think really is a kind
of along with Home Alone and Gremlins. One is technically
a Christmas movie that's places during Christmas. It's really really good,
you know, back in the days of really good practical effects.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Crampis the movie largely uses practical effects except when there's
wide shots of him, like bounding over buildings, but it's
he's always in the shadows, which I think is the
best way to use CGI is when you don't like
show it too and that's always the best way to
kind of have a monster when you don't have to
look at it and get tired of it.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
Hitchcock was right, you know, it's the monster off the screen.
Let people's imaginations do the special effect.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Even in Jaws, the fact that Shark wouldn't freaking work
ended up being a feature and not a bug because
it forced Spielberg to have to like be really creative
about how he shot it. And I think the Shark
is only on screen for like four minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Similar to Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Labs,
both of which clearly are based on the pre Christian
traditions that led to Crampis.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Think about it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Question, don't think about it too much, but so okay,
December sixth, the morning after Crampis Night is Saint Nicholas Day,
And if you're a kid in places that celebrate this,
this is the morning where you go outside of your door,
whether that's your front door or the door to your bedroom,
(28:54):
and you check your shoe or your boot that you
left out previously, and that's like you or that. That
is the moment where you get your grade for the year.
Did you get presents in your shoe or did you
get a rod?
Speaker 2 (29:08):
What kind of rod are we talking here?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Like they kind of would beat people with, like in
a shoe. I guess they just I guess as soon
as you open the door would.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Isn't the person who's gonna use the rod to beat crampis?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
I think it's like a horsehead and the bed thing
from Godfather.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
It's threat a portent of things to come, even though
I think that might be a little redundant.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
It's funny though.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
We were talking off air about Bell Schnickel, which is
another sort of punitive Christmas imp I guess, And I
just remember in the scene in the office where Dwight
portrays Best Schnickel and he's all about whipping you with
reeds as well, but he goes, have you been impish
or admirable? And then like Jim's like you mean like
(29:55):
naughty or an ie? Like, no, this is Best Snickel,
nothing like said.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Right, right, and neither is Pierre Noel, neither is uh
Sa Pete and the various things.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Santa has a lot of companions, and they're more edgy
than the Coca Cola company led us to believe when
they created the modern vision.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Of Santa Say, marketing sanitizes history Ben santaitizes.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, so thank you, Max, thank you. I am going
to pretend those are two thumbs up. Thank you, sir,
thank you. So here's the riverside. Emojis don't work for me.
We don't have the right os for it.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Man, it worked for everybody else.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
So we got to note that in general, just to
be clear, the majority of the population is not concerned.
You know, they don't think anybody's actually going to get
kidnapped or eaten or drowned in a river or sent
to the nether world. It's a fun tradition. And so
now we have to ask why why did crampis survive
(31:02):
ancient pre Christian days, transform into a controversial Christmas cameo,
and then suddenly become super popular. Were Nola's not blowing
smoke here? There's a big crampus event every year in Atlanta, Georgia,
and no one's like, well, here's what happened when Christianity
(31:23):
expanded into Central Europe. They're like, dude, check out my mask.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Bro oh, one hundred scent and a lot of these things.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
You know, of course, we're kind of created for very
utilitarian reasons, Like I would argue that the and I
think Max mentioned in the Yule Lads were created during
a time of mega scarcity, where like these things like
candles and you know, like this yogurt and these staples
of existence were incredibly precious and hard to come by,
(31:51):
and if you wasted them even a little bit, you
could legitimately be putting your family's life at risk. So
these these were like designed to you know, the crap
out of kids at the point where they would never
leave the candle burning too long, you know, yes, their ski.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Right right, the taste of butter and so on. So
there is one, at least one milestone moment for Crampis
that expands this popularity. It's the eighteen nineties. The postcard
industry experiences a huge boom. Everybody is sending postcards the
(32:28):
way people were sending tweets back in what twenty ten
or something, and on the way like it started out
by sending a happy Holidays card, an old Saint nick card,
you know, wishing you the best, hope you find some
oranges in your socc or whatever was the big deal
at the time. And then someone figured out they could
(32:52):
make holiday cards that were crampis oriented. There's a German
word for this.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
This is a great rate where German is so good
at encompassing complex concepts and overly complex snapping words, just
washing it together. Oh yeah, I give give it, give
it a good squash. This one would be Crampus carton.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Edgy Christmas card. Yeah, edgy Christmas cards. It's the stuff
your cool aunt would send you.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Some of these were a little racing. They started to
depict Crampus as sort of a bit of a horny boy,
you know, with that long snakelike tongue and sometimes doing
some naughty stuff with ladies.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
And and that's putting aside the regular baseline of him
actively kidnapping and possibly eating children. Uh.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
I think I saw one where he had a child skewered,
like the carcass of a child skewered on his pitchfork.
So these really did lean into These were almost more
kind of blue type car like you said, like your
cool aunt would have like sort of like nudy playing
cards or something like that.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Right, they're violating or they're interrogating social taboos, right, and
they're also popularizing this idea. So now, if you are
someone who is traveling the continent and you want to
send a car to someone who doesn't live in Central Europe.
You're sending the coolest card you can find. All of
(34:24):
a sudden they know about Crampis. Crampis goes viral in
an analog way, and these cards are crazy to your point.
You can look them up and you can see a
lot of really weird stuff, and part of the appeal
may also be psychological. Antonio carniiro spoke with National Geographic
(34:46):
about this, and he said, this is a way for
people to get in touch with their animalistic side. Look
at these dual personalities, right, you put on a mask,
just like the Internet today. You put on a mask
and all the sudden, it's no longer you.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
Yeah, I mean it really is like Halloween at Christmas. Yeah,
well that sounds great to me. But now should we
get to the masks of it all?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Do it? Because they are very particular and then very interesting?
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
So the mask are a seasonal industry in Central Europe.
Think about it this way. If you're in the United
States right before, right before Halloween, excuse me, you'll see
a bunch of disused department stores transform into spirit Halloween
stores and they become this seasonal cottage industry, or you
(35:38):
know how meet and greets with Santa pop up starting
in November. Great school kids still work on their own
homemade Crampis costumes, and I thought this was weirdly wholesome.
Some of those costumes, if they're good enough, they get
tucked away for the next year.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Totally.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
I remember distinctly when I went to actual job in
kindergarten making a lot of paper mache masks. It's a
very popular thing, and I distinctly remember, Uh, that's the
first time I was exposed to the concept of paper mache.
And we would like you would build it around a
balloon and then you'd pop the balloon and then it
would give you this like shell, and then you could
(36:19):
cut the bottom out and then you could wear it
on your head. You'd make these almost then you cut
the eyes in the mouth out. Now that I'm thinking
about it, that is a very German kind of tradition.
You don't people don't do paper mache as much around here.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
It's so cool though. Papers is awesome, and that's awesome
that you were doing this as well. Do you uh,
did you hold on to the mask after you've made it.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
No, I didn't, but I do distinctly remember my kindergarten
teacher's name was Frau Neuhause, which means miss new House,
and I was. It was right before we moved to
the States, and I think I was going back a
few times and coming back and she really wanted me
to bring a bought a finger bass because they did
not have butterfinger bars in Germany at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
And I believe I obliged that.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
She actually reached out to me after my mom passed
out of nowhere on Instagram and it was the sweetest thing.
I hadn't thought about her in ages, and she reached
out saying that she had found out about that about
a year later.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I love that moment.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
I think they probably have butter fingers over there now,
but at the time.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
It's sort of like now we get kinder, you know,
over here, but there was a time where we did
not get there. They're not the real kinder though they
so now that's not entirely true. The eggs, of course,
are different because choking hazards, right, But that's what I'm
be the ones with the white chocolate on the inside.
But you can get those as bar the bar versus.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, I had the kinder bar, but it's they call
them kindred Joy now kinder Joy at Tot Toys. It's
more of a dipper than an egg. It is, it's
it is nothing the same, but it's gone global, just
like Crampis and Crampis like, why did this guy become
so pop popular? I'll be honest with you, A lot
(38:02):
of folks agree with this. It's capitalism. Oh yeah, commodification.
Capitalism loves a franchise, loves us spin off. There's a
reason there are so many Marvel movies, so many comic books,
so many Pokemon. So Crampis is this pop culture phenomenon
for people who want to celebrate the Yuletide season in
(38:24):
non traditional ways. We talked about these Crampis parties and
Crampus crawls in Atlanta, but things like this occur in Washington,
d C. In New Orleans, in pretty much any American
city of a certain size.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
At this point, one hundred percent, and it does appear
to be continuing to pay dividends because it's not like,
does it reached the level of saturation of say, Marvel
movies or Pokemon. You know, you have like one Crampis movie,
and I heard there's going to be a Crampus movie sequel.
But let's try to keep Crampus out of a full
(38:59):
cinemat universe. You know, it kind of sucks the joy
out of it a little bit, sort of cheapens it.
You know, I've got marble fatigue, my friends.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, it's not Crampus if it's every day, right, it's
not Christmas if it's every day. I mean, but there's
a lot of merch and that merch still gets sold
year round, collectible horns, figurines, chocolates across any kind of
Christmas market. I'm sure you can go We didn't check
this yet, but I'm sure you can go online to
your ebays or your amazons and find any number of
(39:29):
Crampist related merchandise. And the question is if we are
commodifying this or cramp modifying Yeah, okay, all.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Right, well, if we sail down, the man's the guy.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
But if we're doing that, to your point, are we
not turning this ancient relic of folklore into yet another kitchy,
soulless sort of money grab. You know, when does the
crampest fatigue set in.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
That's what I'm hoping we can avoid.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
I think Grabus is really cool and uh, I've only
seen the Crams movie a couple of times, and I
am very excited to officially add it to my holiday
viewing list.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
I'm also so excited to hear what you guys think
about rare exports.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I know very little about it, which I'm excited about.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
I don't want to spoil it's so weird, dude. H.
We also, uh, we also want to give a moment
of honor to Santa's other companions. Turns out Old Saint
Nick globally is a lot less like a single act
and a lot more like the Wu Tang clan. He's
got companions all around Europe.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, And we talked a little bit about Shavata pet
Shavata Peta in the Netherlands, who is sort of a
sidekick of I think I think bell Snickel maybe like
I think that's right. Results vary, but he is sort
of a court jesterly fellow, but often in full blackface, right.
(41:03):
And I think we talked about this not terribly long ago.
Maybe it was a year ago around Christmas, but I
think that some places in Europe have sort of started
to distance themselves from.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
The whole Schwarza peint thing. But it used to be
as common as can.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
Be to see, you know, very airy and European types
dressed up in this motley, you know, with the full
blackface on.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Kind of like Bell Shickle, which you mentioned earlier. You know,
he has a face smeared with charcoal and we're talking
off air and I asked, you, guys, how much charcoal
can someone smear like that before it's officially blackface.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Well that's a good point. I believe Swartza pat is
meant to be covered in soot.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
I believe, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
It was very much more a coal based, chimney based
economy at the time. There's also Servant Rupert in German folklore,
Paranoel Father Christmas in French folklore. It goes on and on,
and you guys, honestly, Crampus is the coolest. We hope
everybody is having a great holiday. We hope that we
(42:16):
hope that you enjoy this deeper lore of Christmas. Check out,
as you said, Noel, check out our Your Lads episode.
Check out the origins of Christmas on stuff they don't
want you to know, and we wanted to make good
on something we mentioned in a previous episode. Oh yeah,
we talked. We talked Noel and Max and Alex sirkeez
(42:39):
here too. We talked about maybe reading a couple of reviews.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Oh yeah, and hopefully this will entice the rest of
you to leave, leave some some nice ones. Apparently some
people think we're like the woke police or something out there.
Let's let's push all those down the queue, because we
make no apologies for being human beings with a perspective,
and I don't think we're overtly political or anything.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
But it's just crazy how triggered some people get just
by like people.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
Having opinions and being human. I mean, that's just how
it is. But yeah, please Ben, I would love to
maybe read one apiece.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah, yeah, here, why don't you? This is one of
my This one we found that I thought was nice.
And we're keeping these both very short. But why you
do the first one?
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Then this one comes from doctor say, they say, great show,
recommended four stars.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Where's the fifth star? Doctor say? What did we do
to hurt you?
Speaker 4 (43:35):
I really enjoy the style interwoven with the topics are
asides quasi related banter. We specialize in and tangents that
add color to the conversation, where nothing if not colorful.
Thanks doctor Say, and we.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Have one from Squeak eight seven four to oh one
informative and lighthearted five stars.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Thank you Squeak.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
I have been listening for a long time. I enjoy
history and enjoy information with a light hearted banter.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
Well, yeah, if you want to leave a pleasant review
on iTunes or podbey or whatever, please do. We might
share a few more of these moving forward. If you
want to have your name and comment right on the show,
that's a surefire way to do it.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Big big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Big big thanks to our returning guest Alex the Circumstance
Circa Alex, howd we do? Did we convert you to Crampus?
Speaker 2 (44:26):
I think I got to check out that movie that
you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
I might have to watch that later tonight.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Mm hmm. Get the spirits excited to see it as well.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
Huge thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the Quist sort of a
Crampis type fellow, a little more of a Bellsnickel. I
would say, oh, shots fired, Yeah, and I once saw
him get his wigs snatched off and he put it
on backwards too. There was a reference to the previous episode.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We're doing callbacks, guys. Big big thanks to Alex Williams,
who composed this track. Big thanks to Eves Jeffcoat. Christopher
hasiotis here in spirit. I am a research associate for
this episode. We can't wait to explore more ridiculous history
with you, folks. We've got gosh no, We've got a
lot of things on the docket that I think are
(45:13):
I don't know. Every time I read like our secret
treasure troph of stuff we're working on, I get so excited.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
I'm excited to start digging in on some of them myself.
It's going to be a fun new year. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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