{"id":3574,"date":"2016-11-29T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T14:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=3574"},"modified":"2016-11-29T22:06:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T21:06:17","slug":"in-advocacy-for-american-christmas-demons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=3574","title":{"rendered":"In Advocacy for American Christmas Demons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Forget<\/a>

Forget Coal in a Stocking, this is Real Motivation<\/p><\/div>\n

\u010cert<\/em> is coming to town. On December 6, \u010cert<\/em> comes around with St. Mikul\u00e1s (Czech St. Nick) and doles out the punishment portions of the festivities. So while St. Mikul\u00e1s hands out candy to good kids, \u010cert<\/em> gives the bad kids coal, whips them, or, in special cases, brings them to hell in a sack.<\/p>\n

And what do we have in the U.S?<\/p>\n

Sure, we have some laterally terrifying Christmas characters. There is something a little spooky about a flying reindeer whose nose lights up. And there\u2019s a lot terrifying about a talking snowman who passes out when his hat comes off.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t even bring up The Grinch. First off, how scary can a demon be when he has a puppy? Secondly, you really think The Grinch is going to scare kids into being good? If you\u2019re not good, some green guy is going to come take your gifts and then hide in a cave until he feels guilty. Then he\u2019ll probably bring them back<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Pbbt.<\/p>\n

I advocate more demons in the American Christmas tradition. And I am talking scary Christmas demons. The Europeans have them all over the place and they have better healthcare and less fear of public nipples. I\u2019m just saying\u2026there may be a connection.<\/p>\n

What I like about the European Christmas demons and monsters is that some of them act as the Yuletide\u2019s bad cop to Santa\u2019s good cop. There\u2019s Krampus, who is like Santa\u2019s evil demon twin. He goes around with Santa (or St. Nick) and is called forth to deal with kids who were bad. Then there are characters like P\u00e8re Fouettard and Hans Trapp, who both play an anti-Santa role. They punish naughty children harshly; Fouettard, a former evil butcher, naturally cuts the children to pieces and then eats them.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a bunch of freelance Christmas demons out there. Such as Frau Perchta, whose threatening presence during the twelve days of Christmas keeps German and Austrian kids in order throughout the rest of the year. She punishes offensive kids by ripping out their organs and replacing them with garbage, which seems pretty good incentive for putting away your laundry and brushing your teeth before bed.<\/p>\n

Covering the Icelandic kids in this respect is Gr\u00fdla, an ogress (favorite new word, by the way) who kidnaps, cooks, and eats children who don\u2019t obey their parents. Gr\u00fdla\u2019s cat, J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturinn (pronounce by drinking a fifth of brennivin and singing along to Sigur Ros being played backwards), is a Christmas demon in her own right. Known as the Christmas Cat, she comes around and eats kids who’ve been lazy all year.<\/p>\n

I was told as a kid that I would get coal in my stocking if I didn\u2019t behave, and while this did tone me down in the last two weeks of December, for the rest of the year it had little impact on my rambunctious behavior. But if I\u2019d been told that I would be eaten by an ogress and her cat, I would have (first looked up ogress in a dictionary, and then) been a very good, very scared boy.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe.<\/p>\n

I think we should come up with an American Christmas Demon. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Let the pitching begin!\u00a0<\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u010cert is coming to town. On December 6, \u010cert comes around with St. Mikul\u00e1s (Czech St. Nick) and doles out the punishment portions of the festivities. So while St. Mikul\u00e1s hands out candy to good kids, \u010cert gives the bad kids coal, whips them, or, in special cases, brings them to hell in a sack. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-VE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3579,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions\/3579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}