Krampus Day

Via the Dish, Clay Risen looks at Santa's bad helper in Austria:

According to Mannfred Kapper of the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Krampus was initially a side note to the St. Nicholas story, a goat-faced eminence noir who accompanied St. Nick on his December gift-giving tours. ‘Nicholas and Krampus would come to the houses together,’ Kapper said. ‘Nicholas gave the children presents and Krampus beat them.’ But in the last 200 years, Krampus has slowly developed an identity of his own. ‘Today Krampus is more popular in the countryside, but if you come to the city it is more St. Nicholas,’ he said.
A while back I spent a year in Jennersdorf, Austria, teaching English at the local high school. Jennersdorf is a stone’s throw from nothing, a southeastern village of 3,000 people a few miles from the Hungarian border. There I experienced a host of unimaginable traditions—I watched a man be wedded to a tree, for instance—but nothing quite compared to the weekend of drunken merriness and satanic symbology that is the Krampustage.
Originally, Krampus had just the one day. A few men in each town dress up in furs, heavy boots, and a ghoulish mask topped with horns—with a switch in hand. Then they go to all the houses with small children, and when the parents open the door they run in and act menacing—growling and cracking their switches. The children scream. After everyone’s had a good fright, the parents invite the men to sit down and have a few shots of kirsch or schnapps, which they always accept. Not surprisingly, by the end of the night the Krampuses’ growls are a little slurred, their switch-cracking is a little too close to the children, and parents have to make sure their kids don’t look out the window, lest they catch a glimpse of the Krampus puking in a gutter.
But Krampus Day soon morphed into Krampus Weekend; it’s likely that villagers got jealous of the lucky few who got to run around town in costumes, act like idiots, and get plastered. Thus was born the Krampusfest—or, as it is known in southeast Austria, the Kränchen. Typically held on the Saturday after Krampus Day, the Kränchen is a village-wide party held at a local school, community center, or other facility: anywhere large enough and sturdy enough to hold 300 or so drunken villagers. (Sometimes a town will hold its Kränchen a week before or after Krampus Day—that way other villages can participate, turning what was originally one night of child-spooking into a three-weekend-long sousing.)

Man, that reminds me of German Father's Day.   We need more reasons to have parties.  Get me my mask and switch.