Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus

....This is my second copy I'm buying ....Krampusnacht by Kate Wolford........Either I loaned my original out or ????.... I read it every year so a replacement copy is ordered........I always dread falling into the gooey wintery mush of Christmas......Fortunately I found Krampus......Krampus is well known to much of the rest of the world, but new to me........He is a Central European folk hero. A horned figure described as 1/2-goat, 1/2-demon, 1/2-Loki mischief maker.. (read the PS for clarification) who, during the Christmas season, punishes adults & children for their many misdeeds & misbehavior's......I thought if anything could spare me from the diabetic inducing Christmas Horror.......Krampus, a century old,.......over the top prodigious monster could be just what I needed......In fact that is just what Krampus provided me. An anti-dote from the inane & crass assembled versions of Christmas.......Krampus has brightened me more than if I had taken a flamethrower to dozens of pudgy snowmen or lobbed ½ a ton of Limburger Cheese into the local toy stores.....Krampusnacht is an assemblage of 12 short stories...........Each one is a dark gem..........Take a look & take heart before the hurry & slurry that is Christmas grabs you & drags you into its commercial, meaningless matrix......…..Krampusnacht is worth a read……every year.........There is a 2nd volume entitled... Tales of Krampus....I have that one as well & I will & savior it this year also.........ps.... I know I put in 3 halves but in my defense Krampus is other worldly so he answers to a higher mathematic form.... I'm just sayin' Get the book!!!!

I enjoyed all but two of the 12 stories, they were all well written, below is a brief synopsis of each.First Night of Krampus: Prodigious (by having an unusual tongue and putting on a costume a man is able to become what Santa needs)Second Night of Krampus: The Wicked Child (brothers shouldn't make their little sisters cry)Third Night of Krampus: Marching Krampus (a young girl is befriended by Krampus)Forth Night of Krampus: Peppermint Sticks (Mr K has a new assistant, one who doesn't particularly like his boss or his job)Fifth Night of Krampus, Ring, Little Bell, Ring (a slow building horror story of a woman who falls in love with a man and then finds out who and what he really is, I didn't particularly like this story)Sixth Night of Krampus: A Visit (a man gets a well deserved Christmas visit)Seventh Night of Krampus: Santa Claus and the Little Girl Who Loved to Sing and Dance (There are some kids so horrible so nasty so selfish and mean spirited *fyi I HATED this story)Eighth Night of Krampus (be careful choosing how you die)Ninth Night of Krampus: Nothing to Dread (a little boy catches Krampus and changes his town forever)Tenth Night of Krampus: Raw Recruits (Krampus needs people to make switches and one recruit makes certain he will have many new raw recruits)Eleventh Night of Krampus: God Killer (a man goes on trial for killing Krampus)Twelfth Night of Krampus: A Krampus Carol (a retired highway patrolmen gets the Krampus treatment tjat he and others often gave out)

I read the first story and cringed a couple of times at E.L. James-esque metaphors. But I decided having a little literary kitsch in my life wasn't a wholly terrible thing. I kept going.I read through more stories. Some were hit or miss. Most fall victim to the problem common to short stories--no clear resolution. That's just part of the genre, and some were worse than others about it. Short stories are generally designed to leave the reader thinking about the story, and that's certainly an effective way of accomplishing that. Some were better than others. I particularly enjoyed the Twelfth Night, "A Krampus Carol" by Scott Farrell.But it was the Ninth Night of Krampus: "Nothing to Dread" by Jeff Provine that really caught my attention. I was left wondering at the end whether the people compiling this book had bothered to read the selections. What we have here is basically a morality tale insinuating that a little boy with a VERY traditionally Jewish name is to blame for the Holocaust.**Spoilers follow**The tale is set in Leonding, Austria. You know, the childhood home of a young boy named Adolf Hitler. But it's *also* the childhood home of a little boy named Jakob. Let's just take a moment to recognize that out of the litany of names the author could have chosen, he has gone with Jakob, a name belonging to a prominent patriarch of Jewish tradition. Clever, wicked little Jakob has planned ahead for his visit from Krampus this year. He manages to subdue Krampus and extract a deal from him never to come to his town again. And of course, without Krampus to punish the wicked children in Leonding, we all know what "Adolf who refused to study" grew up to be, don't we? Now, I can grant that the remainder of the description about the boy seems designed to paint him as a little Christian boy. I'm willing to accept that perhaps the choice of name was accidental.However, I also believe that this author, considering the insinuation of his story, had a duty to write it very carefully. Writing morality fiction about the Holocaust is just generally not a good idea. Taking a tragedy ending with millions of lives lost and turning it into "if only this fictional arbiter of good and evil had been free to do his job, it might not have happened" is callous and irresponsible. Then failing to at least *avoid* also selecting a name belonging to one of the groups most targeted by said genocide and atrocity is just too much. Provine, as a college professor, should know better than to so carelessly reference historical atrocity.

After reading countless holiday romances, I was definitely in the mood for something…different. So I delved into the world of Christmas horror. As it turns out, a lot of Christmas horror is erotica – who knew?! But hidden amongst it all was this – twelve short stories about Krampus, Santa’s devilish counterpart.I honestly hadn’t heard of Krampus until the 2015 Universal Pictures movie came out. But after watching it I have to admit I was interested in the lore. Krampusnacht was a good read because of its variety – stories of varying length set in a multitude of time periods and lots of different takes on the beast of lore.There are some really great little tales in here – and some not so great. I think for me Ring Little Bell Ring was a story I wish had been longer, it was such an engaging idea, and Santa Claus and the Little Girl who Loved to Sing and Dance was so outrageous it was brilliant. I was also particularly drawn to Raw Recruits – one of the darkest stories in the anthology and definitely my kind of Yuletide horror. However I felt the weaker stories were so weak as to pull down the whole anthology.If you’re a bit tired of the syrupy sweet, Cliff Richard themed Christmas cheer then Krampusnacht is certainly something you might want to indulge in. It’s a dark hot chocolate (with a healthy splash of something stronger!) kind of book – ideal for those dark (but not too dark!) winter nights!

Scary and fun!

bought as a present and was well received.

The cover made it seem like it would be a collection of old stories. These are new authors/stories. Patchy collection. Nothing wrong with any of them but a bit like watching made-for-tv movies at Christmas.

An enjoyable collection of short stories based on the idea of the Krampus. Like any collection of short stories from different authors, each one has a different style, with some better and some worse, but overall they're pretty good, and the variety makes it interesting.It's not just all about punishment of bad children. Some of the most effective stories in the collection condemn overly judgemental people, or people who want to use the spirit of the Krampus as a threat to control others rather than seeing their own problems. There's a visit to the North Pole, testimony before a tribunal of the gods, a former police officer confronting his misdeeds, Krampus looking for a bride, and a discussion of the difference between "southern" (Mediterranean?) and "northern" culture.A nice read in the lead up to Christmas.