The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures

by Sarah Clegg

In 1348, people in the court of Edward III dressed up as animals over Christmas. In the earliest sources from Iceland, meanwhile – that is, in the mid-thirteenth century – there are hints of a house-visiting tradition featuring men dressed as the ogress Grýla. Even Bishops started to get in on the fun – in 1406, the Bishop of Salisbury enjoyed ‘disguisings’ in his manor during the Twelve Days of Christmas. The Boy Bishops, as well, went door to door demanding treats, mirroring the actions of the guisers even if they weren’t dressed as monsters themselves. Christmas guising may even lie at the heart of one of the best-known medieval poems – Gawain and the Green Knight. The opening of the poem takes place during the Christmas celebrations of King Arthur’s court. Amid the feasting and merrymaking, a terrible, bizarre figure comes through the gates – a giant man, entirely green and riding a green horse, carrying a stick of holly in one hand and an axe in the other. He has come, he says, for a Christmas game. Any man can strike him with his axe, on the condition that a year and a day hence the blow will be returned. Gawain accepts the challenge, and, thinking to avoid receiving any blow in return, beheads the Green Knight. But the knight – horrifyingly – does not fall even as his head rolls across the floor. Instead, he reaches out with his enormous hand, picks his head back up again, mounts his horse, and reminds Gawain that in a year and a day the blow will be returned. As he...