Despite contemplation and the scent of candles: brawls, riots and evil have always characterized the Advent season. And if the old horror figures weren’t enough to spread fear, then politicians had to serve as hate figures.
The police reported that two men from Schweinfurt ended up in the hospital after their company’s Advent party. According to the report, the thugs injured each other during a fight. A fight, of all things, in Advent, in the staaden time of reflection and the smell of candles, how’s something like that? Well, the world has never been peaceful, not even during Advent, quite the opposite. If you look at the old chronicles, it is clear that there have always been the worst attacks during Advent, and there were often dead and injured people lying around. In the face of riots and riots, the authorities regularly felt compelled to ban Advent customs.
16 years ago the police in the tranquil village of Gelting near Wolfratshausen observed real hunting scenes on St. Nicholas Day. Armed with fence pickets and sticks, young people attacked the Krampuses accompanying St. Nicholas, who by nature are not squeamish themselves. One is said to have even cut off the tongue of a boy in Reichenhall. No wonder that St. Nicholas was also beaten up from time to time, even the boy Gerhard Polt and his gang had taken a liking to it.
It is striking that all the great saints of Advent – Nicholas, Lucia, Thomas – have sinister figures at their side. Their names are Krampus, schiache Luz and bloody Dammerl and they embody evil in this world. In the past, the pedagogical motto was that St. Nicholas and his companions should scare the children, and many a rascal was put into Krampus’ sack. A children’s prayer from the 15th century already said: “Holy bishop Sanct Nicolas, in my distress do not leave me …”
Spreading fear and terror is man’s greatest pleasure. The grandfather of the writer Carl Amery never forgot that the horrors of Santa Claus and Krampus were sometimes not enough to scare children enough. After the 1866 war, he once wrote, “of course we children in Schwandorf absorbed our hatred of Prussia, and we were often threatened with Bismarck instead of St. Nicholas.”
In contrast to St. Nicholas, who has long since mutated into a peaceful fellow, many state leaders continue to spread fear and terror. Only their names keep changing.