The Krampus: St. Nick's Alter Ego

A Brief Description, and a Perfect Book/Gift for Both Kids and Adults for Christmas

I have always been fascinated by St. Nick’s (Santa Claus’s) alter ego, the Krampus. Wikipedia actually gives a pretty good description of the creature:

“The Krampus is a horned anthropomorphic figure who, in the Central and Eastern Alpine folkloric tradition, is said to accompany Saint Nicholas on visits to children during the night of 5 December, "Krampus Night", immediately before the Feast of St. Nicholas on 6 December. In this tradition, Saint Nicholas rewards well-behaved children with small gifts, while Krampus punishes badly behaved ones with birch rods….

Krampus is usually featured as a man with horns with one grotesque human foot and one foot of a goat, typically covered in black hair, and also a very long snake or dragon-like tongue….

Krampus carries chains, thought to symbolize the binding of the Devil by the Christian Church. He thrashes the chains for dramatic effect. The chains are sometimes accompanied with bells of various sizes. Krampus will carry a bundle of birch branches with which he occasionally swats children. The birch branches are replaced with a whip in some representations. On Christmas Eve, Krampus travels with a sack or a basket strapped to his back; this is to cart off evil children for drowning, eating, or transport to Hell. Some of the older versions make mention of naughty children being put in the bag and taken away.”

As you can see, the unsanitized Santa is a pretty scary dude, something which Michael Dougherty’s 2015 movie Krampus (starring Toni Collette) caught beautifully. It’s a film we Johnsons return to every Christmas because it captures both the wonder and horror of thinking you can get “stuff” for free. But the psychology behind the Krampus is far more complicated than this, of course, because, in some versions, the Krampus is also a projection of our sexual fears and hang-ups—that is, he is often deathly seductive.

But my point in this post is to recount my exasperating experience in writing and publishing a PG-13 book on the Krampus.

A year before the movie came out, I discovered the Krampus creature through reading a study of monsters in literature. What we need, I thought, was a great short book on the Krampus. The more I thought about it, characters (the three main ones being middle graders) then started to appear in my mind as did a storyline that might go something like this:

It’s two days before Christmas and a quiet Rhode Island town is about to be visited by a number of unexpected guests—including a pair of very different Krampuses. Are they there to protect the innocent, or to exact revenge for a long-forgotten tragedy? Some curses fade over time, while others grow stronger. In this homage to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a young boy named Christoph and his friends must find some way to atone for a wrong committed a generation before they were born.

Who wouldn’t want to read a book like this? I thought. What publisher wouldn’t jump at it, especially from an author whose writing had received an NEA Fellowship and whose previous middle grader was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as on of the “Best Novels of the Year” and whose YA novel was called by Booklist “the most gorgeously written novel of 2007”? And, I also had great blurbs from a Newbery Honor recipient and a Golden Kite winner.

And yet . . . my agent couldn’t get an editor at any big house to accept it. Most of them declined, dismissing it as a “seasonal” book. But wait! Isn’t the Polar Express a “seasonal” book? There were other stupid responses I won’t go into, though a few editors were interested in the project if I might agree to turn the Krampus monster into a vampire, which, at that time, was still all the rage.

A vampire Christmas novel? And what about that Dickens homage to A Christmas Carol I worked so hard to create?

Still, I must admit that I considered the vampire offer. At that time, my contracts were starting at 20 grand, and I am not a rich man.

But then my agent told me about something called the White Glove program, being offered by Amazon. The way it would work is that Amazon would work with my agency with no payment, except royalties. All I had to do was to deliver the final copy, and I was allowed to come up with my own cover.

Finally, after all these years, I thought, I could stick it to the big boys, have complete control of the book, make a fortune, (because it is an extremely good book), then go on TV, presenting myself as a “rebel author.”

Some of what I hoped for did happen. The book got great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads Krampus/Goodreads, and even two young filmmakers wanted to make a movie of it, until, predictably, their backers went south.

The end result?

I’m glad I published the book as I did, but it will be the greatest Pyrrhic victory of my career, and I was reminded yet again that without a big house to promote the book or knowledge of social media to get it out there, I was doomed, though, because I have the rights, I will agree to take it off Amazon after this year, and then resubmit it. As any experienced writer knows, tastes in the literary world change.

So below is where you will find the book and a trailer. It’s an ideal Christmas book for middle-grade up to adult readers, kind of like the audience for Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and The Graveyard Book—literary and scary enough for both young and old. But before clicking on those below sites, here is the short opening to the novel.

Revenge

To begin, think of Revenge as a creature, say a Wolf. Then imagine his life, but not in prairie brush or dark dens abandoned centuries ago. This Wolf lives in a wooden shack in a bleak uninhabited land. A land of ice and constant snow. His house of rotted timber lets the cold air through. Its rugs of human misery are tattered and chewed through by rats. On its shelves lie broken bowls and cups. Tarnished utensils are scattered about―some twisted into macabre shapes. It is always dark in the house of Revenge. Always the stale odor of sadness. Outside his door, sucked open and closed by the frigid wind, the Wolf sits with weary, bloodshot eyes. His fur is a tangled mess, his chest, once broad, now sunken.

He’s always hungry, this Wolf. No food can satisfy him, no drink can quench his thirst. You summon him by wishing evil on another. Sometimes your curse is so piercing it rises above the constant storms swirling outside the Wolf’s door. His eyes brighten. His ancient legs stiffen, preparing him for a necessary journey. He takes no pleasure in your revenge, especially tonight, two days before Christmas. For this is a Christmas story. A story about a Wolf bent on revenge, a story about people, even children, inexplicably disappearing from a quiet Rhode Island town. But, most of all, it’s a tale about a boy named Christoph, cursed to die because of a past slight. Or was it more than that? It must be. What other reason would make Revenge (in this story, a Wolf) enlist the Krampus?

Yet there are other creatures afoot not found in books. Not even Christoph’s books, which he values as much as Argos, his faithful dog. Certainly, Christoph isn’t afraid. He lies in bed, bundled in flannel pajamas, Argos curled against the bed’s footboard. Snow falls thick outside his window. Christoph wonders if it will ever stop. The town wonders the same thing. So much snow.

Tomorrow, he thinks, tomorrow, I’ll go to the bakery with Clarisse and Bullet. I’ll have a Swedish rye cookie, Clarisse a ginger molasses tart, and Bullet a chocolate Bavarian doughnut. The dough will still be warm. We won’t want to leave, but Mr. Engel will shoo us out.

Christoph can almost taste the cookie as he drifts off to sleep.

Argos rustles. In his dog’s mind’s eye, a large creature appears through a thick curtain of snow, then vanishes. Argos growls, moves closer to protect Christoph, or maybe himself.

Who can possibly know what a dog thinks?

The Amazon paperback and Kindle versions are at The Night Before Krampus (book)

A trailer for the book is at Krampus trailer

Here are the blurbs, one from a Newbery Honor author. Enjoy

“A wicked good story that will appeal to readers of all ages. Destined to become a Christmas classic—excuse me, a Krampus classic!” - Rodman Philbrick, Newbery Honor Author

“Peter Johnson’s The Night Before Krampus takes readers through the twisting streets of the other side of Christmas. Will Christoph beat his family’s curse and solve the mystery? Or will the Wolf, also known as Revenge, live up to his name? Part mystery, part myth, this book will scare the Dickens out of readers, while at the same time make them want to wish each other a ‘Merry Krampus.’” - Kelly Easton, Golden Kite Award Winner

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You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com

His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems

His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories

Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss