Krampus: A 'Pagan' Christmas Devil With No Pagan Paper Trail

What did the earliest writers actually describe?

Alexander Tille's 1891 article in the Leipzig magazine Die Gartenlaube gives the fullest early picture in the sources checked: in south-western Lower Austria, he wrote, St. "Niglo" arrives with Krampus as his Schreckmann, his bogeyman. The children sing to welcome the saint. He has each child pray and show their prayer, school and writing books, and at the end each kisses his ring. The black Krampus, in a fur, with glowing eyes, a long red tongue and a big chain, stands at the door "die Befehle seines Herrn zu vollziehen," to carry out his master's orders (Translation: Where Tales Began).

Tille sorted the Christmas masks he described into two groups. He put Niglo's Krampus among the figures in which "die christliche Färbung," the Christian coloring (Translation: Where Tales Began), could not be missed. He set them apart from others, such as a bear played by a young man wrapped in pea straw, which he said survived without any trace of Christianization.

Tille's survey set Krampus among the relatives of Knecht Ruprecht, whom he took for a remnant of heathen custom. In Alsace, for one, the Christkind hands out sweets while Hans Trapp climbs in at the window in a bearskin, his face blackened with soot.

Clement A. Miles, writing in 1912, describes what looks like the same Lower Austrian ceremony, citing O. von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld's Das festliche Jahr. It has a hymn, prayers, lesson-books shown at the table and the kiss on the saint's ring. In his account, though, the figure at the door is called Ruprecht, and the visit falls on Christmas Eve; Krampus follows the saint in his chapter on St. Nicholas's Day. Tille's passage does not name the night.

Is Krampus pagan? The dated records, layer by layer

This entry's working unit is the first-ink date: the date of the earliest written record that can be checked, which marks where the paper evidence starts, not where a custom began (how the site dates records). Some retellings merge the Perchten records, the Krampus records and the printed pagan-origin claims. The table gives each its own layer.

Table data: krampus-first-ink-layers.csv, with the source and link for every row, plus the six later records charted in the section on why Krampus came back.

The trail of the custom goes quiet before about 1600. German Wikipedia's sentence, citing Schuhladen's 1983 study of Perchten customs in the Berchtesgaden area, Tyrol and Salzburg, reads "Es gibt keine Quellen vor Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts," there are no sources before the end of the 16th century (Translation: Where Tales Began). Schuhladen's study was not read for this page, so the date rests on that summary.

German Wikipedia's gallery dates a "Gruß vom Krampus" card to around 1900, and English Wikipedia says such Krampus cards, usually with humorous rhymes, have been exchanged since the 19th century.

Where does the "ancient pagan demon" idea come from?

In the sources checked, the pagan reading is in print by 1891, in the same article that describes Krampus at the door. Early in that article Tille pictured Yule-time performances in prehistoric times in which a series of gods appeared, while admitting in the same sentence that nothing is known of their nature. He then derived Knecht Ruprecht's name from Hruodberaht, which he called a byname of the god Wuotan.

A year later, in 1892, Die Gartenlaube printed Oscar Gräf's drawing of a Perchten run in the Salzburg region with a note on Perchta. In the conception of the ancient Germans, the note says, she was "die Gemahlin Wodans," the wife of Wodan (Translation: Where Tales Began), and took part in his wild hunt.

In Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (1912), Clement A. Miles listed the Tyrolean Klaubauf, the Lower Austrian Krampus and the Styrian Bartel. He then judged all three heathen in origin, though he granted that their descent was hard to trace. That judgment carries no footnote, but the sentences on either side cite sources. Miles also reported that Tille, in his 1899 book Yule and Christmas, dated Ruprecht only to the seventeenth century.

Popular claims and the dated record

Each claim below appears in print or online; the right-hand column gives what the sources checked show.

German Wikipedia says Krampus resembles the devil as well as the mythical and animal figures of the Schiachperchten. English Wikipedia reports a reading of his chains as a sign that the Church bound the Devil.

Illustration

Krampus vs. Perchten: what is the difference?

The two share masks, fur and bells, but the sources checked keep them apart. German Wikipedia's Krampus article places Krampus with St. Nicholas and says he belongs only to Advent, while the frightening Schiachperchten run in the Rauhnächte, the rough nights of midwinter. Its article on the Perchten puts them between Christmas Eve and Epiphany and divides them into the good Schönperchten and the bad Schiachperchten.

German Wikipedia connects the Perchten, probably, with Perchta, a figure of legend, and traces the word to Middle High German berchttac, the medieval name for the feast of Epiphany. For Krampus it gives two derivations: Middle High German Krampen, meaning claw, or Bavarian Krampn, something lifeless or withered.

On the ground the line blurs. German Wikipedia says the Krampus figure has become mixed with Perchten customs in many regions, and that some groups around Passau now merge the two into figures modeled on fantasy films. The word percht is older in ink than the name Krampus: the table above puts it in an 11th-century name for Epiphany night.

Who else walks with St. Nicholas?

Krampus is one of several figures who walk with a gift-bringer; the entry on Christmas traditions follows the St. Nicholas visit into the wider season. A shared job does not prove a shared ancestor, so this table only lines up what each record says.

Tille's survey also records a Ruprecht who was three people at once. On the island of Usedom the three went about together under that name: one wrapped in pea straw with a rod and an ash sack, one carrying the Klapperbock, one riding a broom. The Klapperbock was a pole draped in goat hide, with a wooden ram's head, and its lower jaw clacked shut when a string was pulled. It butted children who could not say their prayers.

A figure who threatens children also turns up far from the Alps. "The Baba Yaga" is a tale from Alexander Afanasyev's collection, in W. R. S. Ralston's English version of 1873. In it, Baba Yaga tells her servant to wash a girl who has come to borrow a needle and thread: "I want to breakfast off her." She belongs to tales rather than to a December visit, and the two are set side by side here with no claim that either comes from the other.

Why Krampus counts as an orphan rite

An orphan rite is a custom or ritual that is still carried on but whose early origin cannot be settled within the records an entry studies; the word describes the paper trail, not the people. The records studied here are the ones in the Sources list below, and within them Krampus fits. The table keeps three kinds of evidence apart, so that this site's reading of the records does not replace the practitioners' own.

Marie Andree-Eysn's 1910 study of the Perchten of Salzburg shows the kind of object the masked runs left behind. Her figure 131 is a devil mask from Mittersill, then in the Museum zu Salzburg, carved in wood with its horns to a height of 45 centimeters. It is painted black, with red lips, nostrils and eye rims, gilded in places, and a slit beside the staring eyes let the wearer look out. The caption calls it a devil mask and does not name Krampus.

Why did Krampus come back?

The records checked for this page date Krampus's modern history but do not explain it. A ban in the 1930s and pamphlets titled "Krampus Is an Evil Man" in the 1950s are known here only through English Wikipedia, which cites The New York Times and Time. Neither report could be read, so both are marked unverified in the chart below.

Then the celebrations grew again. English Wikipedia reports a popular resurgence of Krampus celebrations toward the end of the 20th century. German Wikipedia's article on the Perchten ties an earlier revival of those customs to secularization and new attitudes to folk culture in the 19th century. It records another revival toward the end of the 20th.

Illustration

German Wikipedia counts the run at St. Johann im Pongau, with more than 1,000 Krampusse in 2008, among the largest. After several Krampus runs in East Tyrol in 2013, it reports, eight injured people were admitted to the hospital in Lienz. More than 60 others were treated as outpatients. In 2015 Universal Pictures released a horror comedy called Krampus, and German Wikipedia sets that film's child-killing title figure apart from the Alpine Krampus it describes.

Krampus questions, answered

When is Krampusnacht in 2026?

Krampusnacht is the evening of December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas Day on December 6. In 2026, December 5 falls on a Saturday, by this page's calendar count. German Wikipedia says the pair usually appears that evening and sometimes on December 6; in Austria's Gastein valley, groups called Passen go from house to house on both days. Krampusnacht keeps the same date every year, unlike Easter, whose date has to be calculated.

Is Krampus from Norse mythology?

No source checked for this page ties Krampus by name to Norse mythology. In Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, read here in Rasmus B. Anderson's English version (1879; 1901 printing), Hel is the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angerboda. Alfather casts her into Niflheim, where she has a hall called Eljudner, with a man-servant and a maid-servant; the passage names no son and does not mention Krampus. Snorri lived from 1178 to 1241, by Anderson's account.

Is Krampus the same as a Perchte?

Not quite. In German Wikipedia's account Krampus walks with St. Nicholas and belongs only to Advent, while the frightening Schiachperchten run in the Rauhnächte, the rough nights of midwinter, though in many regions the two customs have mixed.

Was Krampus ever banned?

English Wikipedia says the Dollfuss regime prohibited the Krampus tradition after Austria's 1932 election, citing a New York Times report of December 23, 1934. That report was not read for this page, so the ban is unverified here. The same article says Perchten runs were banned by some civil authorities, without giving dates.