A large crowd of Krampuses marched the sidewalks of Carytown (click the link for background) Friday night, the first event of its type, It was wildly successful- certainly so if indeed their aim was to simultaneously celebrate and terrify thousands of Richmonders.
The mythological beast-man, antithetical to the more marketable Santa Claus, is an old alpine myth that parallels in time the rise of St. Nicholas and the legend that became the modern fat man flying around in a sleigh. The horned creature snatches up bad children and whacks at you with a bundle of switches. It is an unfriendly beast.
Nonetheless, Richmonders came out in large numbers, young and old, to watch a cluster of Krampuses (about a block long) ring their bells and call for bad children. Horns were standard, and the Krampuses of many different types, young and old, women and men and perhaps actual, indistinguishable Krampuses were both extraordinarily goofy and realistic.
They ranged from weird, evil-ish Santas, to demon-witch Krampuses, to enormous, night-beast Krampuses, to people just mailing it in. You can't knock any of them, including the people who were sort of absorbed into the walk and ended up participating, as it was truly a blast to even behold.
Easily more than half of the costumes were actually scary. As in- the costumes scared me and made me feel uncomfortable because I was scared. Out of the hundreds of children who were eagerly anticipating this wonderful and ridiculous parade (no reported snatchings up of children, in fact the Krampuses were all quite friendly if you got to know them), few that I saw seemed frightened. At worst, mainly some were confused.
I'm sure this is good news for the creators, but turnout was huge, and theydescribed it as “KRAMPTASTIC”. It kind of sucks that we have to wait another year.