Krampus - The Legend and Movie

This poster belongs to Universal Pictures and Legendary Pictures

Because it is the holiday season, I recently went to see the movie "Krampus" in the theater.  I was interested see how closely the movie followed the real story of our Christmas Devil.  It turns out it is not very close.  The moral is the same but not the story. 

The real story of Krampus is simple.  He is both a companion and rival to St. Nicholas.  We ladies of the Nether Realm love St. Nicholas.  He is the perfect man. He listens, gives amazing presents, and makes his living by travelling.  Anyway, St. Nicholas sees to the good children and rewards them well; Krampus on the other hand punishes the bad children.  There is a lot of exaggeration as to how he punishes them.  Truth be told, he does not kidnap them or eat them.  He never did that.  He used to put them in a sack and beat them but that was during the dark ages.  Now, he's the one that leaves coal and ash that is meant for the naughty children to clean up in their stockings and around the house.   

Krampus is a unique demon in that he can be reasoned with and you can get rid of him fast.  All you have to do is give him a drink of schnapps.  Too bad most exorcisms aren't that easy. He'll be happy with you for the following year because of that lovely little fruity liqueur and will leave you alone.  However, he and Santa will still watch you over the year to know if you have been bad or good. 

This Krampus in the movie is much more evil and more brutal.  Yet he isn’t as fearsome as I thought he would be. There is a lot of humor considering this is a horror movie.  It reminded me a lot of another Christmas horror movie called "Gremlins."  It may have been meant to frighten but the execution made it a hilarious spoof. That is not a bad thing, in fact I found it to be a breath of fresh air.  Whenever, you see movies about demons (holiday or otherwise) you expect that there will be a lot of gross-out scenes that could result in nightmares.  I'm glad this wasn't the case. 

The one thing that the tales of Krampus and this movie have in common is what Christmas truly involves.  That is being together with your family, sharing the love that the season brings, and giving rather than receiving.  These are the things that good people do and what we should strive for all year round.  So be good for goodness sake. A little bit of naughty should be accompanied by a whole lot of nice. We don’t need to have a demon remind us of that do we?