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

by Sarah Clegg

people lit fires scented with saffron, wore nice clothes, and weren’t supposed to argue, and if all that wasn’t thrilling enough, there was also a stately procession of the new consuls to the Capitol. But the spirit of Saturnalia only had to slip forwards by a few short days to spill into the Kalends celebrations. By the fourth century AD, the Greek writer Libanius was describing how Kalends was a three-day festival that – like Saturnalia – revolved around gift giving, drunkenness and excessive eating, along with a shifting of normal rules and hierarchies so that slaves could be lazy, or even drunk, without punishment; rules were relaxed, and masters and slaves played dice together as they welcomed in the new year. People danced, joked, sang, and some of the more tedious individuals battered on the doors of shops to keep their owners awake all night. It was a time of riotous excess and wild fun. And while the pagan Libanius broadly approved of the festivities that attended Kalends, the Christian church was not as happy