Is Krampus Really Pagan?

I recently wrote a very long, detailed article debunking the idea that many modern Christmas traditions have ancient pagan origins. In that article, I talked about how Christmas traditions such as gift-giving, decorating Christmas trees, and decorating with mistletoe have actually all originated in modern times and are not nearly old enough to have pre-Christian pagan origins.

With all of those traditions, there are at least some other debunkers out there pointing out that these traditions are not really old enough to have their origins in pre-Christian paganism. There is, however, one Christmas tradition that people routinely describe as having pagan origin that no one else seems to be debunking that I think really needs to be debunked.

The Christmas tradition I am talking about is Krampus. In case you haven’t heard of Krampus, he is a monstrous demonic figure with horns who, according to Bavarian and Austrian folklore, is said to accompany Saint Nicholas. While Saint Nicholas is said to reward the children who have behaved well with presents, Krampus is said to punish the children who have misbehaved, either by dragging them away to Hell where they must burn for eternity for their sins, by shoving them in a bag and dumping them in the woods to find their way home, or by beating them with the bundle of birch sticks he carries.

Krampus and paganism

No matter where you look, every source out there that I could find seems to think Krampus comes from some form of ancient pre-Christian religion. Frustratingly, though, these articles never reference any sources and, in fact, they rarely even give any details beyond “Krampus is definitely pagan.” When they do give details, those details are invariably inaccurate. For instance, here is what an article about Krampus published by the Smithsonian Institute in December 2015 says about Krampus’s origins:

“In fact, Krampus’ roots have nothing to do with Christmas. Instead, they date back to pre-Germanic paganism in the region. His name originates with the German krampen, which means ‘claw,’ and tradition has it that he is the son of the Norse god of the underworld, Hel.”

The article does not reference any ancient pagan sources to confirm this assertion that Krampus comes from ancient, pre-Christian paganism. There are also some pretty blatant errors here. Most notably, in Norse mythology, Hel is a goddess, not a “god.” Also, Krampus is not mentioned in any Old Norse sources and Old Norse was never spoken in Austria or southern Germany anyways, so it is unclear why the Smithsonian article is even bringing Old Norse up.

The exact same errors found in the Smithsonian article are repeated in other articles around the internet. For instance, the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Krampus claims the following:

“Krampus was thought to have been part of pagan rituals for the winter solstice. According to legend, he is the son of Hel, the Norse god of the underworld. With the spread of Christianity, Krampus became associated with Christmas—despite efforts by the Catholic church to ban him.”

Once again, Britannica claims all this without citing any sources. Krampus is not mentioned in any ancient Germanic sources at all and Old Norse was never spoken in Austria or southern Germany, so why do people keep claiming that Krampus comes from Norse paganism?

ABOVE: Photograph of a man from the Austrian village of Kappl dressed up as Krampus for a festival on 13 November 2015. This is more-or-less how Krampus is envisioned today, but, in the past, as we shall get to in a moment, he looked rather different.

The origin of the idea?

The idea that Krampus is of ancient pagan origin goes back at least as far as 1958. In March of that year, the folklorist Maurice Bruce published an article titled “The Krampus in Styria” in the journal Folklore, in which he declared regarding Krampus (without citing any sources whatsoever):

“There seems to be little doubt as to his true identity for, in no other form is the full regalia of the Horned God of the Witches so well preserved. The birch—apart from its phallic significance—may have a connection with the initiation rites of certain witch-covens; rites which entailed binding and scourging as a form of mock-death. The chains could have been introduced in a Christian attempt to ‘bind the Devil’ but again they could be a remnant of pagan initiation rites.”

Almost everything Bruce says here is incorrect. First of all, there is no evidence for anyone having ever actually believed in the so-called “Horned God of the Witches” prior to the twentieth century. The idea of the “Horned God” is part of the so-called “witch-cult hypothesis,” a hypothesis that was popularized by the English writer Margaret Murray (lived 1863 – 1963) in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, published in 1921.

Murray argued that the witch-trials during the Early Modern Period, far from being the result of superstition and mass hysteria as most historians interpret them, were actually an orchestrated effort by Christian clergy to suppress a surviving pre-Christian pagan cult that worshipped a male deity with horns, whom Christians mistook for the Devil. I wrote an article back in October 2018 in which I debunked the witch-cult hypothesis, but I will briefly summarize the main points I make in that article here.

Essentially, Margaret Murray’s entire hypothesis rests on uncritical and selective interpretation of the testimonies that were extracted from people accused of witchcraft by interrogators, often under torture. She takes these testimonies at face value when they support her hypothesis, but rejects them when they do not.

As a result of all these factors, modern historians almost universally regard Murray’s thesis as pseudohistory. It is honestly something of a wonder that Bruce, a professional folklorist—even though he was writing back in 1958—could just take the correctness Margaret Murray’s whole hypothesis for granted.

ABOVE: Photograph taken in 1928 of Margaret Murray, the woman most closely associated with the debunked witch-cult hypothesis

There are other problems with Bruce’s interpretation here. For instance, he automatically assumes that the birch rod carried by Krampus “may have a connection with the initiation rites of certain witch-covens” without even considering the far more logical and obvious explanation, which is that birch is a very hard wood and, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was the wood of choice to be used by parents to beat their children when they misbehaved.

The most likely reason why Krampus carries a birch rod, then, is not because birch was used in the initiation ceremonies of non-existent ancient witchcraft covens, but rather because he uses the birch rod to punish children who misbehave. Along with their obnoxious proclivity for giving Freudian interpretations of literally anything and everything, this tendency to assume that anything and everything from folklore must ultimately go back to ancient pre-Christian paganism is one of the things I hate most about many twentieth-century folklorists. With them, everything seems to be either Freudian, pagan, or both.

What Krampus looks like

Since the sources that have already been published are of no use to determining Krampus’s origins, I suppose I will have to start from scratch. Let’s start out by talking about how Krampus is portrayed. That way, when we look for precursors to Krampus, we will know what we should be looking for.

Now, as it happens, the way Krampus is portrayed has changed drastically over the course of the past century. The earliest depictions of him come from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and they look quite a bit different from depictions today. In all of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century depictions of Krampus, there are eight features that stand out in nearly every depiction:

• Krampus has an insanely long tongue, which dangles out of his mouth, lolling about uncontrollably.
• He has long, pointed horns extending from his forehead.
• He has long claws.
• He has cloven hooves.
• He is usually completely black, except for his tongue, which is red.
• He has a long tail.
• He is bound with chains.
• He carries either a bundle of birch sticks or a birch rod for beating naughty children.

Here are some images of Krampus from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that can give you an impression of how he was imagined back then:

ABOVE: Illustration from 1896 depicting Saint Nicholas and Krampus visiting a middle-class Viennese home. Here Krampus is shown with goat-like horns and an enormous tongue hanging out of his mouth. He carries a bundle of birch sticks for beating naughty children.

ABOVE: Greeting card dated to 1901 depicting Saint Nicholas in the full regalia of a Catholic bishop with Krampus by his side. Krampus is shown as a furry, black monster with horns, cloven hooves, a long dangling tongue, and chains on his arms, carrying a pitchfork and a bundle of birch sticks for beating children.

ABOVE: Card from the early twentieth century depicting Krampus as a hideous, black, hairy monster with a cloven hoof, claws, a long dangly tongue, long horns, and a golden chain at his feet, terrorizing a young boy. The German writing at the top says, “Greetings from Krampus!”

ABOVE: Another early twentieth-century greeting card with Krampus terrorizing a young boy, also with the words “Greetings from Krampus!”

ABOVE: Early twentieth-century greeting card depicting Krampus chasing after a boy, brandishing his bundle of birch sticks, seeking to beat the boy with it

ABOVE: Early twentieth-century greeting card depicting Krampus and Saint Nicholas smiling at each other. The card says “6. December,” which is the feast day of Saint Nicholas.

ABOVE: Card from 1911 depicting a red-skinned, horned Krampus holding a birch rod and wrapping his insanely long green tongue around a little girl

ABOVE: Propaganda image from 1915 depicting Krampus as a black, furry monster with horns, a lolling tongue, a tail, and a cloven hoof on the telephone. The caption reads in German “I thank you very much for the order. I’ll get all the Serbs right away.”

Some pagan things that sort of vaguely resemble Krampus

Ok, so now we have an impression of what sorts of images we should be looking for. Even though everyone keeps claiming that Krampus is pagan, I cannot find anything in ancient Germanic, Greek, or Roman mythology that really looks like him. There are a few things that look vaguely a bit like him, but they are all pretty distant.

Probably the one entity from pre-Christian European mythology that looks the most like Krampus is the Greek god Pan, who was equated with the Roman god Faunus. Pan is usually portrayed in ancient Greek and Roman art as a man with long pointed ears, goat-like horns, and furry goat-like legs with cloven hooves. In some early Greek depictions, Pan has the full head of a goat, but, by Hellenistic times, he was normally portrayed with a human head.

There are a lot of differences between Pan and Krampus, though. Just in terms of their physical appearances, Pan was never portrayed as completely covered in black fur or with a long tail. He was certainly never portrayed with a terrifyingly long tongue hanging out of his mouth as Krampus usually is. Pan was never portrayed bearing chains, nor was he ever portrayed bearing a a bundle of birch sticks for beating naughty children or anything like that.

In terms of their behaviors, Pan and Krampus are even more different. The ancient Greeks and Romans regarded Pan as a benevolent protector deity. According to the Greek writer Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) in Book Six of his Histories, Pan aided the Athenian soldiers in the Battle of Marathon against the Persians in 490 BC.

Far from being a bogeyman used to frighten young people into behaving, Pan was thought to protect the young and the old alike. For instance, in the ancient Greek romance novel Daphnis and Chloe, written by the writer Longos of Lesbos in around the second century AD, when the character Chloe, a teenaged girl, is abducted by Methymneans, her lover Daphnis prays to Pan, begging him to save her. Pan saves Chloe by frightening the Methymneans and appearing their commander in a dream to tell him to let Chloe go.

I could believe that Pan has maybe exerted some indirect influence on Krampus, but I do not think Pan is the most direct source of where Krampus comes from. Quite simply, Pan and Krampus only have a few physical attributes in common and are completely different in most other ways. Krampus has far more in common with another figure than he does with Pan.

ABOVE: Attic red-figure bell-krater painted by the Pan Painter dating to c. 470 BC, depicting the god Pan with the full head and horns of a goat, a massive erection, a short goat-like tail, and cloven hooves

ABOVE: Photograph of a Greek marble sculpture from the island of Delos dating to around 100 BC on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens depicting Pan harassing the goddess Aphrodite, who is holding up her sandal to threaten him

ABOVE: Roman Carrara marble sculpture of the god Pan having sexual intercourse with a goat from the rectangular peristyle of the Villa of the Papyri in the Roman city of Herculaneum, probably dating to around the first century AD

ABOVE: Roman mosaic depicting Pan as a bearded man with goat horns and goat legs, holding a shepherd’s crook

Where I think Krampus really comes from

Krampus does not really look much like anything pagan that I have seen, but he does look very, very much like something I have seen. In fact, Krampus has nearly all the exact iconographical features of the Christian Devil as he was portrayed during the High and Late Middle Ages: the absurdly long tongue lolling all over the place, the long, pointed horns, the menacing claws, the cloven hooves. These are all standard elements of how the Devil was portrayed in high and late medieval times. As proof, here are some fairly typical medieval depictions of Satan:

ABOVE: Illustration of the Devil from the Codex Gigas, folio 290r, produced in the early thirteenth century in Chrast, Czech Republic, depicting the Devil as a monstrous creature with terrifying claws, enormous horns, two tongues lolling out of his mouth, and bulging eyes

ABOVE: Illustration from the Smithfield Decretals, f. 192, of the Devil pushing a nun off a bridge. This illustration, which I discuss in this previous article I wrote, was drawn in the thirteenth century by an illustrator in eastern England, probably in London. It shows the Devil as a hideous, hairy monster with long horns, claws, pointed ears, and a horrible, toothy grin.

ABOVE: Illustration from Codex Palatini Germanici 137, folio 216v, dating to c. 1460, probably produced in Heidelberg, Germany or thereabouts, depicting Pope Sylvester II consorting with the Devil, who is portrayed as extremely hairy, with long, curved horns atop his head, cloven hooves, and demonic faces all over his body. The face on his buttocks is belching (or farting) hellfire.

ABOVE: Detail of the Devil from the right panel of the Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, painted c. 1485 in the Netherlands by the German painter Hans Memling (lived c. 1430 – 1494). Here the Devil is shown with cloven hooves, horns, bat-like wings, and a demonic face in his midsection.

The similarities between Krampus and the medieval portrayal of Satan are striking and obvious, but this comparison gets even stronger. Not only are the medieval Satan and the modern-day Krampus virtually identical in appearance, they are also portrayed as very similar in terms of their behavior.

Today we are accustomed to thinking of Satan as a nearly all-powerful figure who tempts people into sin. In the Middle Ages, though, Satan was often portrayed in mystery plays as a hopelessly incompetent villain who provided comic relief and who always ended up getting chained up and thrown into Hell.

For instance, here is a scene from Play 37 of the York Mystery Plays, a set of forty-eight medieval mystery plays originally produced in around the fourteenth century or thereabouts in the town of York, England, where they were performed until they were suppressed by the English Reformation in 1569. The play from which this passage is excerpted is about the “Harrowing of Hell” and was traditionally performed by the saddle-makers’ guild of the city of York.

The actor playing Satan in this play probably would have been dressed in an animal skin, wearing a hideous mask with horns, and comically overacting, perhaps even talking in a funny voice. The play is in Middle English, so you may have a hard time understanding it, but here is the original text:

SATTAN Nowe here my hande, I halde me paied,
This poynte is playnly for oure prowe.
If this be soth that thou hast saide
We schall have moo thanne we have nowe.
This lawe that thou nowe late has laide
I schall lere men noght to allowe,
Iff thei it take thei be betraied,
For I schall turne thame tyte, I trowe.
I schall walke este and weste
And garre thame werke wele werre.

JESUS Naye, feende, thou schall be feste
That thou schalte flitte not ferre.

SATTAN Feste, that were a foule reasoune;
Nay, bellamy, thou bus be smytte.

JESUS Mighill, myne aungell, make thee boune
And feste yone fende that he noght flitte.
And Devyll, I comaunde thee go doune
Into thy selle where thou schalte sitte.

SATTAN Owte! Ay, herrowe — helpe, Mahounde!
Nowe wex I woode oute of my witte.

BELSABUB Sattan, this saide we are,
Nowe schall thou fele thi fitte.

SATTAN Allas, for dolle and care,
I synke into helle pitte.

If you can’t understand the Middle English, here is my own Modern English translation:

SATAN: Now here in my hand I hold myself paid.
This point is plainly for our benefit.
If things are the way you say they are,
we shall have more [human souls in Hell] than we have now.
This law that you now late have laid
I shall teach men not to allow,
if they think they have been betrayed,
for I shall turn them over swiftly to be sure.
I shall walk east and west
and give them work, suffering, and war.

JESUS: No, fiend! You shall be chained
so you will not flee far.

SATAN: Chained! That were a foul reason!
No, fine fellow, you must be smote!

JESUS: Michael, my angel, make yourself ready
and chain this fiend so that he cannot flee.
And, Devil, I command you to go down
into your cell where you shall sit!

SATAN: Hey, gerroffme! Help, Muhammad!
Now I wax wood out of my wit.

BEELZABUB: Satan, we are defeated.
Now you shall feel the consequences.

SATAN: Alas for grief and care,
now I sink into the pit of Hell.

Also notice that this scene depicts Satan being chained by the archangel Michael. Thus, Satan appears in chains, just as Krampus does in later depictions.

This isn’t all, though; we actually know for a fact that Saint Nicholas sometimes appeared in late medieval German mystery plays alongside the chained Devil. The Grosses Regiebuch (or Big Scriptbook) for the Corpus Christi play and procession for the city of Zerbst, Germany, in 1506 (Neumann item 3402) mentions for inclusion in the performance, as translated in the book The Medieval European Stage, 500 – 1550, edited by William Tydeman and published by Cambridge University Press in 2001, on page 394:

“Saint Nicholas as a bishop, with a choir cope and mitre. A staff and three gold balls in his hand. His hand raised in benediction.”

Then, just a few lines later, the Grosses Regiebuch mentions:

“St Michael as an angel, elegantly turned out, a cross in front of his head, a stole worn crosswise on his neck. Is to lead a devil on a chain.”

As the Middle Ages progressed, these passion plays grew increasingly secular. As the plays grew increasingly secular, the role of the devils as comic relief figures only seems to have grown. Eventually, the mystery plays were banned in most areas during the Reformation, but it is conceivable that some form of the tradition survived in the predominately Catholic regions of Austria and Bavaria to eventually give birth to the traditional Nikolausspiel (i.e. “Nicholas Play”) featuring Krampus.

Ironically, nearly every article about Krampus on the internet mentions his resemblance to the Devil, but yet they all insist that Krampus is not the Devil, but rather a being from pre-Christian pagan mythology—despite the fact that he is almost exactly identical the medieval Devil.

It baffles me that seemingly everyone keeps trying to tie the traditional Austrian and Bavarian Nikolausspiel featuring Krampus to ancient pre-Christian Germanic paganism and yet no one seems to be willing to admit that it is, in all likelihood, actually ultimately derived from the at least nominally Christian mystery plays of the Late Middle Ages.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1885 depicting a crowd watching a mystery play in Flanders in the fifteenth century

So what’s Saint Nicholas doing hanging out with the Devil?

At first the idea of Saint Nicholas, a Christian saint, hanging out with the Devil may seem baffling, but, once you start looking at the sources, all the pieces just fall perfectly into place. In medieval legends, saints and the Devil appear alongside each other all the time. There are dozens of famous legends in which the Devil or one of his demons appears to a famous saint to test him, but the saint defeats the Devil and thereby gains mastery over him in some way.

Saint Nicholas in particular is closely associated with demons because he was known as an exorcist. The earliest surviving account of Saint Nicholas’s life is The Life of Saint Nicholas of Myra, a hagiography written at some point between 814 and 842 AD by a writer named Michael the Archimandrite. In this hagiography, there are multiple legends about Saint Nicholas defeating and driving out demons.

Sections twenty-eight through thirty of Michael the Archimandrite’s hagiography describe Saint Nicholas exorcizing the demons that haunted the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Throughout the rest of the work, the demons banished by Saint Nicholas are described as continually trying to cause harm to him and hinder his work to spread the gospel. Near the end of the work, Nicholas is hailed as “the most active banisher of demons.”

The story about Saint Nicholas banishing the demons that were inhabiting the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos became one of the most famous stories about Saint Nicholas during the Middle Ages. Indeed, it eventually made its way into The Golden Legend, the most popular collection of hagiographies in western Europe during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.

Since there are so many stories about Saint Nicholas banishing demons, it is likely that this is how he and Krampus first became associated with each other. It also explains why Krampus is depicted bound with chains and as a servant of Saint Nicholas; the Devil, whom Saint Nicholas has overcome and gained mastery over, has now become Nicholas’s slave, bound to him and bound to obey his words.

ABOVE: St. Nicolas of Bari Felling a Tree Inhabited by Demons, painted c. 1727 by the Italian Baroque painter Paolo de Matteis

Oh, yeah, Zwarte Piet’s probably the Devil too!

In the Netherlands, Saint Nicholas is usually accompanied by a character known as “Zwarte Piet,” which means “Black Pete” in Dutch. He is traditionally described as a black-skinned Moor from Spain. In the early twentieth century, Zwarte Piet was portrayed as a diabolical, menacing figure like Krampus whose job was to punish naughty children, but, over the course of the twentieth century, he became a more-or-less benevolent figure.

Zwarte Piet is a controversial figure today because he is traditionally portrayed by a white person wearing blackface, a curly black wig, red lipstick, and an earring. This is widely recognized today as a demeaning racial caricature. In recent years, there has been a movement to replace Zwarte Piet with Roetveegpiet, which means “Sooty Pete.” Roetveegpiet is like Zwarte Piet only without the blackface, curly wig, lipstick, or earring. Instead, individuals portraying Roetveegpiet only wear makeup to make themselves look like they have soot on them while retaining their natural skin tone. Other people in the Netherlands have tried to change the color of the makeup worn by people portraying Zwarte Piet from black to gold.

Like Krampus, Zwarte Piet seems to be ultimately derived from medieval and early modern portrayals of Satan. In late medieval and early modern folklore, the Devil is often described as a black man. People who confessed to the crime of witchcraft in the Early Modern Period throughout much of western Europe often describe themselves in their confessions as having encountered the Devil in the form of a black man. While witchcraft testimonies should never be taken as accounts of real events, they do nonetheless reveal ideas that were in circulation at the time about what the Devil was supposed to look like.

The conception of Zwarte Piet as a Moor from Spain seems to be almost a sort of rationalization of the earlier conception of the Devil in the form of a black man. In many versions of the tradition from the early twentieth century, Zwarte Piet was said to punish children by taking them off to Spain, which seems to be a rationalization of the idea of the Devil taking children off to Hell. (You may recall that, in many versions of the Krampus tradition, Krampus is still said to drag naughty children off to Hell even today.)

ABOVE: Illustration of Saint Nicholas and Zwarte Piet from 1850. (I am not going to include any photographs of people in blackface in this article. If you want to see those, you can just search for “Zwarte Piet” in Google.)

But what about Pan?!

Krampus has a few features in common with Pan, such as cloven hooves, fur, and goat-like horns, but he has nothing in common with Pan that he does not also have in common with the medieval portrayal of Satan. Furthermore, Krampus actually has a lot more in common with the medieval conception of Satan than he does with Pan.

As I discuss in this article I wrote back in December 2017, it is possible that the iconography of Satan has been influenced by classical Greek and Roman depictions of Pan. If this is indeed this case, this would explain why Krampus seems to have a few features in common with Pan; it’s because Krampus’s iconography is based on Satan’s and Satan’s iconography has been influenced by Pan.

To that extent, I think you can say that Krampus’s appearance has been indirectly influenced by the appearance of a real ancient pagan deity. Nonetheless, I do not think that that influence is enough to justify the claim that Krampus’s origins lie in ancient pre-Christian paganism. Claiming that Krampus is an ancient pagan figure because his goat horns and cloven hooves probably ultimately come from Pan is a bit like claiming that the character Peter Pan from the 1904 play Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie is an ancient pagan figure because his last name comes from Pan.

Quite simply, there is not enough about Krampus that is actually pagan to make the claim that he comes from ancient paganism legitimate. Krampus is a modern folkloric creation derived from the Devil as he was often portrayed during the Middle Ages who has been slightly indirectly influenced by the iconography of the Greek god Pan. He is certainly not a figure straight out of ancient pre-Christian Germanic mythology by any means.

ABOVE: Cover illustration by the British illustrator Francis Donkin Bedford to a 1915 edition of the novel adaptation of Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie. Peter Pan’s name may come from Pan, but you would be hard-pressed to claim that the character Peter Pan himself is an ancient pagan figure.

Conclusion

It seems to me that Krampus is indeed a genuine holdover from an earlier time, but he is not a holdover from ancient paganism; instead, he is a holdover from late medieval Catholicism. Krampus as he is portrayed in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century depictions is the very spitting image of the hideous, tongue-lolling, horned, cloven-hooved, shackled, mischief-making Devil of the High and Late Middle Ages.

Ultimately, I think there has been some influence from ancient paganism—specifically from the Greek god Pan—on Krampus, but it is very indirect. I think that some ancient pagan beliefs may have influenced the medieval conception of Satan and, through him, Krampus, but I do not think there has been on direct influence from ancient paganism on Krampus himself without the medieval conception of Satan as an intermediary.