If You Think Spooky Season is Over, Yule Has Entered the Chat

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…or were they? You might think the spooky season is over; that you’re safely in December – candy canes, hot cocoa, holiday baking and a mild case of diabetes. But if you think there’s nothing in the winter night to keep you from shivering under your blankets – not from cold, but from pure unadulterated terror – then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.

Yule has entered the chat.

Are the doors locked? Windows shuttered? I bet you told yourself these actions were merely habitual precautions; a responsible homeowner’s prerogative, choosing to wholly disregard that anxious niggling you’ve felt since the sun disappeared over the horizon. Deep down, something instinctually tells you your fears are not unfounded. This is no night for man; it’s a night for beasts.

What was previously a gentle flurry, you realize, has now gathered force, the wintery mix pressing against the door like it’s a stray in search of refuge. A social media meme regarding external temperatures and nature flits through your mind, the one you know was meant to kick you in the seasonal feels. You know better than to let anything in after dark.

That mug of Witches Brew tea you prepared is now steeped to perfection. You wrap your hands around its warmth and return to the hearth where you stoke the fire. Its light flares in defiance of the night. Curled on the couch, shoulders cloaked in your favorite blanket, the fire crackles a comforting sound amid the wails and groans of the tempest outside. You pray to anyone Holy that might be listening that your home goes unnoticed by the passing maelstrom; a blizzard that is anything but. The storm will pass. The season will not let you off so easily.

LOCK THE DOORS, STOKE THE FIRE: MEET THE SHADOWS CHRISTMAS FORGOT TO MENTION

The holidays encompass more than just colorful lights and glass baubles adorning trees, or character inflatables in the yard. It’s deeper than gifts, office parties, charity or merriment. Yule is a time to reflect on your conduct and consider whether you’ve acted in a manner worthy of reward, or if your actions are in need of some improvement. If you’ve behaved, expect to be rewarded. However, if you’ve been a lazy arse, hope to the escape years-end with your life.

Like everything in life, the holiday season has a dark side. The jolly old elf Santa Claus is but one of many mysterious winter creatures that roam the Yuletide night. While the fire pops and the wind howls, the forest remembers names the carols never sing about.

He never speaks. He only smells. They say you catch his iron reek first, drifting through the winter air like a warning. 

In the black pines of Bavaria stalks Bloody Thomas, a butcher-ogre drenched head to toe in old gore. Skin green with rot, horns matted in pine needles and dried blood, he lumbers, swinging a hammer that has never known anything but meat. No sack. No warning rattle of chains. The wet thud is all you’ll hear when he finds a child who’s lied, cheated, or forgot to be charitable. By morning the snow is pink and the ravens are too heavy to fly. Bloody Thomas doesn’t bother with sacks or switches; if your name is whispered on the wind come Christmas Eve, he simply kicks in the door and takes what he’s owed. 

In much of Austria, Bavaria, Slovenia, Croatia, South Tyrol, Trentino, and parts of Hungary, Krampus is no rival to Saint Nicholas, he is his forbidding partner. The kindly bishop and the horned demon walk together. Cloven hooves, shaggy hair, large twisted horns, and a long, pointed tongue that would make Gene Simmons give an impressive nod, Krampus is the embodiment of winter’s foreboding shadow. While St. Nicholas rewards good children with small gifts and gentle words, Krampus scares the bejesus out of the disobedient with swats, coal, or the threat of being stuffed into his sack and carried off. This does beg the question, is the childhood trauma worth the lesson, or is it what makes the lesson stick?

Tradition and fun aside, St. Nicholas and Krampus aren’t merely “good cop / bad cop”, or “hope and fear.” They’re two halves of a single, ancient moral system that winter forced on people who couldn’t afford to be sentimental. St. Nic is the promise that the world can still be kind, even when nature is trying to kill you. Krampus is the reminder that mercy is not automatic; it is earned. Together they’re the balance that kept communities alive with the promise of reward and the certainty of punishment, delivered on the same night. They aren’t propaganda; they’re reality.

So… have you heard of Belsnickel? 

Belsnickel arrives alone, no kindly bishop at his side. Clad in a tattered fur coat turned inside-out, his face hidden behind a grotesque mask with antlers and a long lolling tongue, he is the rough, pagan shadow of Saint Nicholas himself (Pelz-Nikol, “Furry Nicholas”). When chains or a cowbell clank outside the door; the room falls silent. He bursts through the door, scatters peanuts and candy across the floor, then demands children recite their prayers or account for the year’s sins. The obedient may keep what they’ve gathered; the guilty feel the sting of a vinegar-soaked hickory switch across their backs, or a handful of cold ashes flung in their faces before the ragged figure vanishes again into the night. 

Oh, they just keep getting better…

Often portrayed as an old, hunchbacked woman with a long, hooked nose wearing a shawl to cover her head, sometimes shown riding a broomstick and carrying a sack filled with gifts and coal, La Belfana shows up on Epiphany Eve (the night of January 5th). Good kids wake up to find sweets, chocolates, small toys, and fruit stuffed in their stockings. Naughty ones get coal, garlic, onions, or ashes (it should be noted that good kids too receive coal from time to time, as a humble reminder that no one is perfect). She sweeps the floor with her broom on her way out – symbolically sweeping away the old year’s troubles. 

Okay, she wasn’t so bad…but are you sure your place is secure? Because I think I heard what sounded like children’s laughter out there in the dark just beyond the window.

From Icelandic lore we have Grýla, herself a fearsome, hungry ogress prowling the highlands during Christmastime in search of the ill-behaved to nab and cook in her cauldron. Then there’s her Yule Lads. These mischievous little entities are said to come down from the mountains in the 13 days leading up to Christmas. Each lad is named for their specific method of mischief. You’ve got “Meat-Hook”, who wields a hook to steal meat; “Window-Peeper” who gazes through windows in search of things to steal, and “Pot-Scraper”, who steals leftovers from pots, a particularly cruel prank during times when food is scarce. Today’s versions of the Yule Lads portray them merely as mischievous pranksters; no harm, no foul. But once upon a time they were outright terrifying, and designed specifically to frighten children into good behavior. 

Oh dear…here comes Frau Perchta. According to legend, Perchta appears during the Twelve Days of Christmas, from December 25 to Epiphany on January 6. She’s of dual nature, appearing as either a beautiful woman, or as a haggard old crone. In a more sinister form, she’s depicted with a large, goose-footed deformity which adds to her gruesome image. She’s said to reward the well-behaved and hardworking by leaving them small gifts or silver coins. However, for those who have been lazy or misbehaved, she’ll slit open their abdomen, remove their internal organs, and replace them with straw, pebbles, and other inedible materials—

—What was that? I swear I heard something tap on the window just behind you (don’t look) …

From the shadowed north comes Knecht Ruprecht, the soot-blackened, fur-clad servant of St. Nicholas (how many sidekicks does this dude have?), one sack slung over a shoulder is for gifts; the other to carry away children who fail to recite their prayers. 

In the borderlands of Alsace stalks Hans Trapp, the excommunicated knight turned straw-stuffed scarecrow, his bloodless lips still promising to devour the disobedient. And across the Czech and Slovak hills rattles Čert, the clanking, red-skinned devil with curling horns, dragging chains, who on Mikuláš night looms beside St. Nicholas and the radiant Angel, ready to stuff the wicked into his infernal sack and haul them screaming down to hell.

Let us finally turn our attention not to a creature or solitary entity, but to the Mari Lwyd: a haunting Welsh tradition in which a real horse’s skull, decked with bright ribbons, glass eyes, and jingling bells is hoisted on a pole beneath a white sheet. When someone mutters, “The Mari Lwyd is coming tonight,” they’re referring to that eerie, jaw-snapping hobby horse and its rowdy gang whop are about to appear at your door, ready to insult you in rhyming Welsh until you let them in for beer and song.

Far from a threat to frighten children into obedience, the Mari Lwyd is a deliberate crossing of borders. A dead horse, a raw symbol of mortality, knocks at the homes of the living during midwinter, when the veil is thinnest. The battle-of-the-verses fought on the threshold is ritual negotiation: only those quick-witted and generous enough to match rhyme for rhyme earn the right to welcome the “dead” inside, renewing luck and briefly collapsing the wall between worlds.

All these creatures crowd around Christmas for one simple reason: Winter kills. Hunger kills. Night lasts forever if no one keeps the fire going. The gifts, the songs, the candles, the feasts aren’t just celebration; they’re defiance against winter’s night. The darker the terrors at the door, the brighter the warmth inside. We need both. Balance. The coal, the whip, the sack, the cauldron all remind us the good stuff isn’t automatic. You have to earn it, fight for it, and share it before the dark wins. The light only means something because the dark is real.

So, as you cradle that steaming mug and the fire settles into low, glowing embers, listen past the wind. Something older than carols still stalks the winter night. Christmas keeps its shadows, and they know every name on every list.

Stay on the good side of them all.

Sweet dreams, from Witches Brew.

© Dani/Witches Brew