Krampus Posted by gretchenmahn 0 .This time of year always brings me back to my early days in Austria as a little girl growing up in the Alps. My 5 siblings and I would be helping momma and papa prepare for the Holidays, each one of us doing what best we could. Each one of us but one , that is. Little Sammy, the youngest of us seemed to delight in making things difficult. If mamma said, “Sammy, stay out of the strudel!”, Sammy would immediately go to the strudel and run his tongue over the icing. No sooner had momma warned, “Sammy, stay away from the pudding!” then Sammy would go to the pudding, look directly at momma and plunge his tiny fist into its center with such force that the pudding would splatter onto the lace table cloth. Papa and momma would scold him and tell him, “Krampus will punish you!”, but Sammy just giggled. While my other siblings and I were on our best behavior, fearing the punishment of Krampus, Little Sammy seemed to go out of his way to cause trouble. When Krampus finally did arrive, my other siblings and I would cower in the corner hoping to go unnoticed but not Sammy, who would throw himself into the clanging iron chains Krampus clenched between his arms. Sammy would then raise his bare little rosy rump skyward, eagerly anticipating the beating he would receive, begging Krampus not to spare him but to use the greenest of saplings to lacerate his buttocks. Every year this would result in an exhausted Little Sammy who had peed himself from the pain, as evident by the wetness of the chains where he had lain to receive his flogging, but as much as we hoped, he never seemed to learn. Each year he was more and more naughty until, by the time, he was a teen, his once smooth buttocks resembled a Jackson Pollock paintingSee More
gretchenmahn 