Anti-Santas

Nowadays almost everybody has heard of Krampus, the goatlike humanoid creature from central Europe who accompanies Saint Nicholas to punish naughty children:

Krampus

Yuletide legends of various regions, however, include many other scary figures who perform this "bad cop" function in contrast to Saint Nicholas's "good cop" role of bringing gifts to well-behaved children. The Christmas gift-giver, apparently, has often been split into two entities so that Santa can be conceived as kind and generous rather than punitive. Not that our modern concept of him is totally free from the latter trait: "He see you when you're sleeping. . . .he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake." In Germany, Knecht Ruprecht (who might have evolved from a folkloric image of the Devil, according to some scholars) leaves coal and switches for bad children or sometimes hits them with the bag of ashes he carries. The Dutch Zwarte Piet ("Black Pete"), perhaps originally a kobold or a captured demon, sometimes distributes sweets to good children as well as switches to bad ones but often serves mainly as the "bad cop" to leave the benign role to Saint Nick. "Black" could refer to the soot covering his body, but some traditions depict him as racially Black, a detail that has made this Christmas henchman controversial. Belsnickel, also from Germany, combines gift-giving and punishment-dispensing functions. He traveled to Pennsylvania with German immigrants. In France, Père Fouettard carries a whip to punish naughty boys and girls. One legend gruesomely describes his origin as a butcher who killed and chopped up children; after repenting, he had to do penance by becoming the assistant of Saint Nicholas.

This Wikipedia entry discusses several dark or ambiguous personages who accompany Saint Nick in European legends:

Companions of Saint Nicholas

THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (2023), an entertainingly written and profusely illustrated book by Jeff Belanger, collects the lore of a wide variety of "Yuletide monsters."

The Fright Before Christmas

In the Zwarte Piet tradition, some folksongs warn that as the assistant of Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) he may carry off naughty kids in his sack to Sinterklaas's workshop, where they're forced to toil for an indefinite period of servitude. Coincidentally, before having come across this bit of lore, last week I posted this twisted-Santa flash fiction on my website:

You Better Watch Out

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.