Ooooh: look what I found today while poking around at the local antique mall: two gorgeous German Christmas postcards, circa the early 1900s, featuring their rather stern and forbidding-looking version of Santa:
How different these are from our modern Santa! These guys are tall, skinny, their coats are blue, and they appear to be most definitely un-jolly. If you're wondering what's up with the sticks, well, according to my German friends, these Santas typically came bearing not only toys, but switches to beat the bad children with! (As if Santa wasn't already scary enough to most little kids...)
That first Santa looks downright malevolent.
ReplyDeleteYep. Not the sort of guy you'd want coming down your chimney.
ReplyDeleteActually, it was Krampus (in the Austria and Hungary region) that came around the time Santa Claus did and either scared the kids straight or taught them a lesson about being bad. Looks like a demon or devil. There are some really neat postcards out there of this character, but they are hard to come by. Glad that tradition didn't take hold in the States!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, those are some very nice vintage postcards. It's great to see different versions of Santa Claus from different regions and different times.
ReplyDeleteHi Brian,
ReplyDeleteI've looked for Krampus postcards for a long time, and have never been able to find any. But I DO have a couple of Krampus wall decorations (or what I THINK are Krampuses...) I'll have to post them and see what people make of them.
They're fabulous.
ReplyDelete