Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters and time. Today is New Year's Eve, of course, or as it's known in many Western Christian traditions, Saint Sylvester's Day or the Feast of Saint Sylvester, or simply Sylvester the day's namesake.
Pope Sylvester the First was an historic fourth century individual and Bishop of Rome, but much legend was later attributed to him during the Middle Ages, including the idea that he converted Emperor Constantine and cured him of leprosy, as Alexander Reinsteiner discusses in an excellent post for the Switzerland National Museum's blog titled Sylvester Klaus. Both beautiful and ugly residents of the Swiss Canton of Upinstel also rode in
celebrate Saint Sylvester's Day with a mummers parade. The costume marchers in this parade are the Klausa, and they come in three different varieties. First, there are the beautiful Klausa with costumes consisting of traditional breeches or skirts, doll like masks, and elaborate glass be decorated headdresses, some of which resemble dioramas of traditional alpine life. They're really spectacular. Throw in
some giant bells for good measure and you're ready to go. Next, we have their opposite, the monstrous ugly Klausa, featuring fearsome monster masks and bodies made of hay, straw, moss or fir tree trimmings, snarling wild faces, and elements of the wilderness itself made manifest in this humanoid form. Again, throw in some giant bells and you're good to go. Finally,
we have the pretty ugly Klausum. By pretty ugly, they don't mean fairly ugly or even more ugly, but rather a little bit of the beautiful and a little bit of the ugly. So while they may boast bodies of moss or straw, their masks are typically more neutral stoic. Even also giant bells, and with all Klausa bells of any size. Really the bells are key, you see, because the Klausa, grouped by tight make their way around town and announce their presence at a given house by jumping
around and ringing their many bells. When the occupants of the house open the door, the klauso wish them a great new year ahead and accept gifts of cash and drink, the ladder of which they take through long straws due to their elaborate masks, then onto the next house. Now, some of you might be wondering about the Klaus and klausum as that suggests there is a connection here to
Christmas traditions. As Reichsteiner explains, the practice ultimately stems from pre Christian pagan traditions, but then comes to coalesce around Christmas during the Christian era, at least until a moral mandate issued by the Protestant Reformed Church in sixteen sixty
three banned activities surrounding Saint Nicholas. Rather than stopping these traditions outright, they apparently shifted to the new year and a new Saint, though they focus less on the actual saint and more on archaic of folksy traditions so less overtly Catholic imagery, and Reinsteiner writes that by the early
nineteenth century these customs had fully shifted. He also points out the Traditions such as these, involving bells and mild noises to drive out the old year and bring in a freshman, can be found throughout the world, including for instance, in Chinese traditions, which we've discussed on the show before. Do check Reinsteiner's blog post for more information about the Sylvester Klausa. He has some excellent photographs on there as well.
I also recommend the beautifully illustrated book Festival Folk, An Atlass of Carnival Customs and Costumes by Rob Flowers, which includes a few pages on the Sylvestia Klausa, in addition to various international mask and costume traditions. So, whether you're celebrating Saint Sylvester's Day today, or you're waiting for old New Year's Eve on January thirteenth, or you're saying to heck with it, I'm just gonna wait on Lunar New
Year fair enough. Whenever you plan to leap into twenty twenty six, I just want to issh you a great new year ahead, full of life, happiness, curiosity, and maybe a few monsters. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact or Animalius stupendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.