Welcome to the nonprofits. Our first story this week takes a closer look at the way some Texans celebrate the holiday season. San Antonio's first ever Crampis parade in the King William neighborhood brought thousands to witness horned demons, witches, and Saint Nicholas figures celebrating Germanic traditions. While most enjoyed the festive atmosphere, some evangelical protesters took issue with the event, claiming it promoted fear and judgment for children dressed as Jesus.
One protester carried across to defend the kids, while others denounced the parade with megaphones. Ironically, their objections seemed to boost attendance. Despite the controversy, the event was a hit, with participants celebrating San Antonio's vibrant cultural diversity and hoping to establish a new holiday tradition. This story was from TPR by Joey Palacios on December sixth, twenty twenty four.
And So, first I want us to go over to Jonathan. Jonathan, I would like for you, if you can, to give give us a little bit of background on this cramp story. Can you talk about what Crampus is all about, and what are some of the origins and so forth.
Sure it's a Germanic myth of Crampus. He is. He is a creature that is the polar opposite has turned into the polar opposite of Santa Claus on December fifth. If you are a naughty child, Crampus will find you and beat you or eat you, or some other diabotical parental blackmail to keep you in line. So the thought is that Crampus is derived from an earlier Perched. I can't pronounce that right. It's probably Slavic. But Perch was this devilish humanoid, goat like creature with a long neck
like a giraffe. People wore costumes and marched in processions known as Perchase Laufen, and boy, I didn't pronounce that right. I apologize to German speakers everywhere. Eventually, person is Perch and Laufen or perch Run were introduced to Saint Nicholas and Perdue by the Catholic Church, who did like Perch but couldn't in the end. In the Anatolian Reader, not
the Anatoley. The Alpine regions, they couldn't enforce the ban on it, so it persisted, and so they introduced Saint Nicholas, and they put Perch under this control of Saint Nicholas, or under the auspices of Saint Nicholas, and he became Crampis. Crampus became part of Saint Nicholas. This mythology in the Alpine regions uh Crampis Slough or Crampis Run parade was on December fifth, or Saint Nicholas's Day Eve. Usually usually the sixth was Saint December sixth was Saint Nicholas's Saints Stay.
There is a lot of Lauren practices today in the Alpine, but just to be sure, Crampis is usually given schnopps. So if you want to keep on his good side, stock up and the person winter spirits can be supposedly be present from winter solstice to January sixth, so you know you might want to keep a lot of it on hand. The King William neighborhood itself is named after Wilhelm the first of Germany. So I'd like to just pass this myself, but Scott, do you want to sure?
Yeah?
Yeah, So yeah, I want to pass it off to Kelly here, Kelly Jonathan was telling us about, you know, the history of the Crampis. Can you tell us a little bit more about how Crampis Knacht is celebrated today around the world.
I can, And some of you may have noticed that I'm sands tied today and it's because I wore my Crampis t shirt. I'm an old fan of the Crampis. So the Crampus has been traditional in Central Europe, Austria, Slavinia, Germany, Czech Republic and Hungary, and there he's a common sight even in holiday markets throughout Austria, so everybody he knows who Crampis is. Crampis knock has become more and more popular in recent times though it is starting to spread
around the world. We're seeing Crampus parades become widespread and as more and more people learn about the demon, he's appearing more and more in the media, which is how we got this story right. And there's even been a horror movie made about the Crampus. So one of the fun things that I like about it and is customary, and John mentioned it, is that you feed snaps through the crampits when they come parading through the town. Everybody has a bottle of snaps and glasses for the Crampis
to drink from. So I mean, it kind of makes me want to make my own costume because that's one more day I could drink for free, right right.
Right?
Sounds like a awful though that might be your last, your last free drinks there.
It's it's since about I'd say about ten to fifteen years ago. It started actually becoming popular in the US. In a lot of US cities. New York Portland have Crampis houses. They're like a Halloween haunted house, and they're open for one or more nights during the holiday season. New Orleans has a huge Crampist Knock parade. They claim it's the largest one in the country. I'm not sure. I didn't go down there and count, but I'm willing to believe it. Many other cities have parades as well,
including Saint Paul, Minnesota. Saint Louis decided to base their Crampist Knocked more on the drinking aspect of it, and it's more like a pub crawl down in Saint Louis and Columbia. South Carolina also has a big Boozy Bash that they claim is actually the oldest crampist knock parade in the US. So there's a little bit about how people are celebrating it today.
Cool, all right, thanks Kelly for sharing that with us. That, yeah, it sounds like it'd be dangerous to be the crampis right, because if you just drinking schnaps all night, the possibilities for the evening get more and more diverse as you get further further on in that exactly, speaking of evil debauchery, Steven, I want to go to you next. I want you to talk about the right. I want you to talk
about the Christians that were protesting. They were protesting. Why would they have a problem other than something being becoming more and more popular, which apparently is a thing. And you know, why would Christians be upset with this.
Celebration besides the fact that it was something fun? Right?
Besides that? Yes?
Well yeah, yeah, well Evangelicals, they definitely are alarmed by anything that might be a celebration of darkness. Right. Philippian's for says, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such thing and that kind of gives them that impetus to say that anything that is you know, spooky, scary, dark should be
forced away from our attention. We shouldn't be glorifying these things that aren't you know, bright and light and from God, which is just so so so selective, I guess from from my perspective, Like the idea of not you know, tainting Christmas with this dark, spooky, scary stuff is so wild to me because Christmas is, you know, the Christian celebration of Christmas is about a child being born on around Christmas so that he could be raised like a
lamb for slaughtering, to be crucified to death, so that God's children can escape an eternity of torture. And that that seems pretty dark to me, pretty damn dark. You don't get to have one without the other. Kettle thout namest as black, like, yeah, it's it's so selective, and I honestly, I think it comes down to just this idea of Christians. You know, they've had such unmitigated cultural attention for so long, and as those things subside with time,
then they are going to make a stink. Because again, it's not persecution, it's just the way that we are evolving as a society, and that is hard for people who have experienced a long term privilege to understand.
Except I think you said the magic P word there.
I have a feeling that's going to be showing up periodically throughout the evening tonight.
Let's go back to it. Let's go back to Jonathan real quick here.
Jonathan, what do you think the motivation behind the celebration not just for the people of San Antonio, but for people worldwide, as Kelly was saying, celebrating this. Is it really just a callback to the ethnic origins of the people that are organizing the celebration, or is it intended to be like a poke in the eye against Christians? Or is it just like in Saint Louis, Is it just an excuse to just have a party and get drunk.
Let me see, hmm, well, this is this is an interesting thought because it's a I think it has a little bit of nuance to it. I think there's a bunch of it. I think that people want tonight in that time of they you know, the prior holiday was Thanksgiving, right, so I think people are ready, they've recovered from Thanksgiving, it's the holiday season. They want something between that and Christmas, so you know, in this particular holiday that just happened
to fill it. And you know, and also that it doesn't hurt that they're kind of poking fun at Christmas, you know. And that's why the diehard evangelicals are you know, losing their shorts over this one. You know, but they do that with anything that they just don't want us to have, you know. So But and then the other side of it is like any good German october Fest is you know, in their mind, my mind all the time.
So it's like another chance to go out and party with your friends, right, And it's just I think that's a lot of the motivation. I think the motivation for this particular one was that it was seen as a contest between the evangelicals and whatever, you know, and so people came because they wanted to see what the fuss was all about. It's like the freeway, see an accident, everybody slows down to take a look. Well, these two
things are going to clash. Let's go watch the fight, right, And it turned out that it was just a good time apparently for everybody. So and the evangelical backlash sort of fizzled out to nothing. Bullhorns, you know, they might initially be a problem if there's only a few people, but when there are thousands of people, bullhorns don't mean anything.
Well.
Well, like they said in the article, the you know, the protest brought more people down.
It definitely, it did bring much more because of the advertisement, you know, because the churches decided to make it a thing. Everybody said, cool, let's go watch this. Yeah, so they're hoping to make it a big thing every year. Now that's the other thing. They might have backfired completely and have a crampas knock every year, you know, on December fifth. That would be excellent and my German side family would be please.
I'm sorry, Stephen, what did do you want to add something in here?
Yeah, just like I believe I'm not the psychologist here, but I think that there's also an understanding that we as humans, we do we experience fear, and fear is something scary and the best way to deal with that, to get over that that monster under the bed or in the closet, is to look it in the face and to be around it. And that's the way that that we as you know humans as creatures as we
can deal with fear and make it more manageable. So like a celebration like this and Halloween and d O stella Maritos, like they're all about making scary things less scary, and fear is like a cornerstone that the church is
built off of. Like if they want to control you and your behavior, they really really benefit from having this, you know, sort of damocles hanging over your head, the fact that, oh, if you don't comply, you may just end up burning in hell, unless you're Calounists, in which case you don't know if you want to end up in hell or not. But but fear is so important that they really need to like have the corner on
that market. And if we as a society aren't as prone to fear, then that makes us just less prone to the manipulations of the Church. So I can understand why they would be concerned that people are enjoying things around when in the month of December that aren't that they don't.
So you think the Christians are worried about somebody's horning in on their territory.
That there might be on the territory interesting or at least yeah, the the the mystifying and making figures less scary.
Interesting take on that, Kelly, Let's let's jump back to you. Would you consider this a secular celebration. I'm we talked a little bit about it's it's kind of in the eye of Christians.
It's is it really in the eye of Christians though, or is it just like right along with Christianity? Like Stephen was pointed out, you got Christ has to have something to save you from, right, and and here is here's this thing that's going to get the bad kids, throw them in a sack. And where's he bringing him to? He's bringing him down to Hell? And let's face it, Hell is a Christian invention. So no, this isn't a
secular thing. This is totally a Christian tradition, you know, a Christian holiday if you think about it.
Whi's kind of off.
Yeah, right exactly, which you know, like in your introduction you mentioned the guy with the cross defending the kids, and I was I got this weird vision of my head with the guys swinging and around and.
Of all the mission accomplished. Scott then.
Gotta be God's hero? Right?
Interesting? Interesting?
So if it's if it's a religious uh, or if at least has religious origin or underpinnings or relation or something like that. Jonathan, do you think this aligns at all with like a humanist perspective? I mean, is this something that we I'm assuming that we're all humanists here, but if we're not, that's fine. But do you think that it's something that humanists should actively support or is it more just a chance for us to watch religious people getting their undies all up in a bundle.
Well, not that I mind watching them get their undies in a twist, but I think that Uh. I think that if you are so inclined, if it's part of your heritage and you like delving into a little bit of your own history as a person, then yeah, support it. Go see it. I mean, it's always worth seeing. I mean we go to Renfaars, right, I mean, people in costumes in parades are fun. You know, I participated in
a few and it's really a lot of fun. So if you're just going to have fun, humanists can have fun too, So you know we need to we need to support it in the sense that if you enjoy doing that, fine, you know, as far as getting accustomed to the Boogeyman. Yeah, we might have some leftover crap we need to get accustomed to, you know.
So, right, Kelly, I know that you have some personal experience celebrating Crampus knocked of wondering if you would be willing to share a little bit with us about your your festivities there in your little corner of this of the country.
Maybe maybe not. Cramp has knocked itself, like, I'm not going on parading through my little town and at Crampus costume, although now I know free snaps, I might start doing that. But I have been big fan of the Crampis for decade, Like like I showed off my Crampis shirt. I've had this shirt for a good five or six years now. If you don't wear him a Christmas time, they last forever. And one of my good friends, knowing how much fan I am with the Crampis, actually sent me this Crampus
Christmas tree ornament a couple of years ago. He's pretty cool. And I don't have a Christmas tree. We put up a festivist pole at my house, yes, we really really do, and you can't put ornaments on it because it's too distracting, so I.
Put it up here, and it's been here.
Even if you go back and look at my very old videos, my crampus is hanging there. It's been there for years now.
So is there an official day of for Festivus? Is there like a day twenty third? All right, Stephen?
Before we wrap this one up, I just wanted to get your perspective as somebody who's not American. Do they have do they celebrate that you heard about this crampis thing in Canadia?
Up there?
No? It has not popped up on my radar. But I live in a rural area in one of the I don't live in Toronto, So do I Am I really a Canadian? Am I do I really count? Yeah? No, it's not on my radar. But it's so your Thanksgiving is in November?
Right, yes?
Okay, yeah, because even that, like ours, is in October, so there's a there's a larger gap there between the festivities there. Yeah, it's not. I'm sure, I'm like whatever, especially in our modern age of information, I'm sure that there are people, especially with the number of you know, Eastern European Germanic immigrants, that are that our country is made up of, built up.
Of you have big populations of German immigrants.
Especially more recently within the past couple of decades, especially in my particular part of the country. But they're like conservative Germans, so and be you Crampis.
Isn't not really the thing?
They probably not unless they have like crampest stockings underneath their ankle link skirts.
Yeah. Yeah, actually made me curious because I did all or you know, found all the places in the US where they had crampus celebrations and I just found out that they do have a crampus parade in Kamloops, in Edmonton, in Calgary, and in Toronto.
So that has just skipped over the middle of the prairies.
There, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And Alberta. That's wild concerning. That's at like little mini Texas.
Right right, That's what I was thinking too. Isn't that a weird place for in the beat? But yeah, that's that's.
Maybe that's crazy enough.
This one is racing Macdavi in San Antonio right there in the middle.
Of Texas, right.
Dallas is a big one too, really yeah yeah.
Do they claim to be the biggest or the oldest or they just.
No, no, we got you got nor leist with the biggest and South Krok, Columbia, Right, Columbia, South Chorge, Charlotte, South Carolina.
Yeah, Columbia. That's where I used to live for a year or so, my sister.
Did you attend the Crampis Festival? Is it a festival or is it.
A I don't know because I've never I never heard.
Patrick's Day or is it more like a Halloween kind of thing?
I don't know. You know, I never saw it. I was in West Columbia and it's the state capitol though, so you know.
It's like both you get dressed up and get drunk, you know, so it's oh, that's a normal Halloween, and us you can get dressed up.
Same like Saint Patrick's Day. You know, this is only Saint Nicholas Day, you know.
All right, all right, cool, Well, thanks everyone for talking about cramp has Knocked with us tonight, and thank all of you for listening and if you want to hear any more of the