Krampus

One of the more interesting Christmas traditions, IMO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus

According to Alpine legend, Krampus - a goatlike figure with matted black hair and a long, lolling tongue - has various ways to encourage children to behave. Among them are his habit of savagely beating them with birch sticks, kidnapping them and taking them in chains to his lair before eating them, putting them on a train that doesn't stop until it reaches the Lake of Fire and drowning them in ink.

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...and another fun one: Père Fouettard. Nowadays, he accompanies St. Nick as he makes his rounds in Eastern France and whips children who have been too naughty to receive presents. Like most characters of his type, Fouettard has toned it down these days - before people started to believe that children might not benefit from spending much of their time in a state of abject terror, he used to drug them before cutting their throats, chopping them into pieces and boiling them up into stew.

Last: Knecht Ruprecht, a dirty, sooty old man who goes around one night before Christmas summoning children to the doors of houses, where he demands that they perform tricks for him. Those that don't impress him are beaten or, if they really don't put their backs into it, are bundled into his basket and taken off to his home in the Black Forest where they're either eaten of thrown into an icy river to drown.

That last one looks kind of familiar...

I love the way the kids in the last one are so obviously completely shitting themselves. The ones in the basket were probably traumatised for the rest of their lives - which may not have been very long, of course, because they look as though they were probably eaten quite soon after the picture was taken.

I thought I'd resurrect this thread and add some creepy Santas.

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www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2836013/Police-arrest-60-protesters-D...

Zwarte Piet has become a bit embarrassing as far as the Dutch government are concerned!