‘Winter Legends and Lore’ explores Krampus and more

In the early 2010s, a rather strange and frightening figure began appearing in conjunction with the American Christmas season. Covered in shaggy fur, with goat horns, a lolling red tongue, and a zeal for punishing naughty children that will leave them wishing for coal, the Krampus was an Austrian folklore import who had begun an unassailable assent through American pop culture.

Between 2010 and 2015, the Krampus appeared on such popular and diverse TV programs as Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, The Colbert Report, NBC’s supernatural police procedural Grimm, and American Dad, among others. In 2015 it made the jump to the big screen, with the release of Michael Dougherty’s horror film Krampus. Despite some early skepticism that Krampus was only a passing fad, this yuletide demon most recently appeared in both the Disney+ The Santa Claus TV series with Tim Allen and Amazon’s Red One (2024), alongside Chris Evans and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Even more important during this period was the advent of Krampus bar crawls, an Americanized version of the traditional Austrian Krampusumzüge (“Krampus Run”), in which dozens of costumed performers race through the streets on December 5, spreading terror and joy. According to reporter Christopher Bickel, in 2014 Krampus related events were being held in over 30 U.S. cities nationwide, a number which has no doubt increased in the last decade.

In his 2023 book Winter Legends and Lore, folklorist Chad Lewis heeds the call of Krampus’ newfound international popularity to examine him further, along with other dark and sinister yuletide figures and traditions from across Europe.

Coming in at a slim 95 pages, Winter Legends and Lore is divided into 20 bite-sized chapters, just enough to give readers new to the world of Christmas folklore a taste of what’s out there. Think of it like a folklore advent calendar, minus a few days. Each chapter also features an accompanying illustration by artist Morgan Knudsen, who provides the book’s foreword.

Lewis starts off with a discussion of the lore surrounding the winter solstice before diving into the various supernatural “little people” associated with the holiday. While all Americans are familiar with Santa’s elves, Lewis considers characters like the Swedish Tomten and the Scandinavian Nisse, which serve as important prototypes.

The next six chapters of Winter Legends and Lore consist of a discussion of the history of several yuletide traditions including Christmas carols, telling ghost stories by the fire, the importance of mistletoe, why we decorate Christmas trees, and where the yule log comes from.

Chapter 9 treats readers to a potted overview of the history of Santa Claus. While there isn’t much in the way of new information here, Lewis does the important work of debunking a few common misconceptions about old Kris Kringle, such as the claim that his iconic red and white outfit was invented by the Coco-Cola company.

This is followed by the book’s first major shift in tone, as Lewis considers the terrifying figure of the Wendigo, the cannibalistic monster from First Nations Algonquin folklore. The Wendigo admittedly has nothing to do with Christmas, but it’s often associated with the winter, and Lewis is also the co-author (with Kevin Lee Nelson) of the excellent Wendigo Lore: Monsters, Myths, and Madness (2020), so the inclusion of this particularly nasty spirit makes some sense. You can consider this chapter in Winter Legends and Lore to be an extended preview of that book.

Keeping things scary, Lewis goes on to cover the Krampus and his Pennsylvanian Dutch relative Belsnickle, the latter made famous by his 2012 appearance on NBC’s The Office, as memorably portrayed by Rainn Wilson. The next two chapters look at superstitions associated with the Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25 – January 6) and New Year’s Eve. Then we’re back to yuletide frights with La Befana, the Italian witch of winter.

The final five chapters of Winter Legends and Lore represent a variable grab bag of topics, the folklore equivalent of stocking stuffers. Chapters 16 and 17 look at creatures from lumberjack folklore associated with winter weather, with oddities such as the “fur-bearing trout” and the “snow snake,” as well as a retelling of the story of Babe the Blue Ox. Chapter 18 deals with winter weather prognostication, while Chapter 19 contains a set of occult instructions every child will want to get their hands on: “How to Bring About a Snow Day.” The final chapter looks at the various U.S. cities that have occasionally laid claim to be “the Ice-Box of the Nation” with the coldest temperatures around.

Part of the reason these traditions have captured Americans’ imaginations in recent years undoubtedly has to do with how strange and foreign they seem to our modern conception of Christmas as “the most wonderful time of the year.” However, much of Lewis’ research for Winter Legends and Lore included combing through American newspaper morgues. What makes this one of the most fascinating aspects of this book is that it aptly demonstrates just how long Americans have known about many of these traditions.

Did you know, for instance, that a description of Krampus appeared in the Detroit Free Press in 1872, as well as the Philadelphia Times in 1889? Or that journalists in the Dover Daily Reporter were instructing readers to leave out “a platter of rice porridge […] for the Nisse” as recently as 1961, and as far back as 1884 in the Biddeford Daily Journal? Or how about in 1873, when the Cincinnati Commercial cautioned its readers that werewolves were especially active during the Twelve Days of Christmas? Such tantalizing citations also show how quickly folklore can be forgotten before being rediscovered, and hopefully never forgotten again.