The Krampus Runs: The Alpine Night the Devils Take the Street

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

On the evening of 5 December, in Alpine towns from Salzburg down through the Tyrol and across into Bavaria and South Tyrol, the streets fill with horned devils. They stand two and a half metres tall in matted fur, faces carved from limewood into something between a goat and a nightmare, cowbells the size of buckets slung around their waists, and they come at the crowd swinging birch switches and roaring. This is the Krampuslauf — the Krampus run — and it is the loudest, strangest, most physical Christmas tradition in Europe. I have not stood in an Alpine square while a Krampus singled me out, so this is a correspondent’s read from history and reportage rather than a night I have survived. What it is, where it comes from, and why a region would build this into its December, is worth the walk through.

Alps on vo.rs

The Krampus Runs: The Alpine Night the Devils Take the Street