Chicago, do you believe in Krampus?
Chicago designer is credited with its presence in US
the Atlantic Ocean with America’s earliest settlers, who were more comfortable watering down Europe’s Saint Nicholas and creating our jolly old Santa Claus.
But Krampus is becoming an increasingly prominent presence in the U.S. and the person generally deemed responsible for that is Monte Beauchamp, an award-winning Chicago art director and graphic designer.
He first met Krampus some 20 years ago when he received from a friend some pre-World War I postcards that featured the devilish character. “The artistry and craftsmanship were amazing, just superb,” says Beauchamp, who would quickly learn that the cards were made by anonymous artists in Germany and were very popular in the 1890s.
Beauchamp featured some of these cards in his brilliant magazine BLAB, an art-anthology-comics-andfound-graphics treasure. “The response to the feature was so overwhelming that I decided to run a follow-up in the next issue,” he says.
He did so and then approached half a dozen publishers with the idea for a Krampus book. “That was just frustrating,” Beauchamp
says. “The general response from them was ‘No one will know what a Krampus is.’ That’s very limited thinking.”
He did find a publisher and in 2004 “The Devil in Design: The Krampus Postcards” was released. “And I started getting requests to license the imagery from it from television shows.” Such shows as “The Supernatural,” “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” and “NCIS” used the images for their holiday specials. “That’s how the ball got rolling here in America,” says Beauchamp. “That’s how the Krampus craze, if it really is a craze, got started.”
A new book, “Krampus: The Devil of Christmas,” was handsomely republished in 2010 by San Francisco-based Last Gasp publishing house, and in it Beauchamp writes that Krampus was “a hairy, horned, supernatural beast whose pointed ears and long, slithering tongue gave misbehavers the creeps!”
He would “terrorize the bad until they promised to be good. Some he spanked. Others he whipped. And some he shackled, stuffed into his large wooden basket, carted away, and hurled into the flames of Hell!”
Beauchamp does an artful job of detailing the Krampus history in his book but its wonder is in the dozens of featured illustrations, creepy as many of them are: Krampus leading a pack of toddlers chained to one another; carrying a child (or children) off in baskets; beating kids with branches. Some are labelled “Gruss vom Krampus,” meaning “Greetings from Krampus” and a few of the cards are quite racy, depicting Krampus cozying up to statuesque women, presumably the mothers of the children about to be, or having been, punished.
Beauchamp is quite correct when he writes, “Though the content of these postcards can be debated, their aesthetic brilliance cannot.”
From that book has grown something of a Krampus cottage industry that now includes greeting cards of various sizes, playing cards and “Creepy Krampus” sticker books with “72 reusable stickers” intended “for naughty boys and girls of all ages.”
“Does this surprise me? Not really. People are people,” says Beauchamp. “And this is a country that goes nuts for zombies in movies, books and TV. Why wouldn’t they like Krampus?”
Krampus’ popularity continues to grow. There was a modestly successful 2015 movie, “Krampus.” There is a haunted house (remember Halloween when the place is known as the 13th Floor?) in Melrose Park that reopens for three days in December with a Krampus theme: “With a backstory of a Christmas Demon, Krampus, coming into the house to snatch up all the little girls and boys, we have reinvented your favorite haunted house.”
There have been other Krampus publications and Krampus-themed events take place at local taverns and can be found everywhere from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. “There are all sorts of interpretations that have popped up recently,” says Beauchamp. “Not all of them true to the spirit of the character.”
But thanks to Beauchamp, Chicago is the Krampus capital of the U.S. You can meet him at the 7th annual Krampus Fest on Dec. 7, from noon to 6 p.m. at Martyrs. It will feature a marketplace, with gifts and other items made by local artists, homemade Gluhwein (mulled wine), food (potato pancakes and sausages) and Beauchamp with his wares. He’s a charming, interesting and lively guy and the event is free, family-friendly. Outside at 6 p.m. there will be a local version of what is known as Krampuslauf, which Beauchamp describes chillingly as “an Old-World tradition in which young men clad as Krampuses are herded into town by a person parading as St. Nikolaus. The revered saint … greets the enthralled, massive crowd, then unleashes the holy terrors upon the festive throng of holiday thrillseekers.”
I can’t remember when I learned there was no Santa Claus, maybe when I was 8. Now, seeing Santas everywhere, I bemoan the commercialization of Christmas.
Not every adult shares those feelings. “I still believe in Santa Claus. I do,” Beauchamp says. “We need, as we grow up in this world, to keep some of the innocence that we had as kids.”
We may need Krampus too.
“He’s the bad cop to Santa’s good cop,” says Beauchamp. “He’s the ‘Dirty Harry’ of Christmas.”