It’s Official: Krampus Is Our New Santa

Sure, I laughed along with everybody else when Krampus said he was running for Santa. I remember joking around with my friends like, “Yes! He should run! That would be hilarious!” We couldn’t help but look forward to the media spectacle that would come from a child-torturing, goat-demon running for Santa, a position very consistently won by jolly, rosy-cheeked, twinkle-eyed men. It was just so insane and frightening an idea to even think of. “Can you imagine?” we’d say, and we really couldn’t.

And when we heard the former Mrs. Claus was also running for Santa, I admit some of us thought that was pretty far-fetched too. But at some point our excitement overtook our skepticism, and all we could talk about was how amazing it would be to have the first woman Santa. My friends and I would dismiss any poll that said the race was neck-and-neck. It didn’t seem possible to us then that a tongue-wagging, hirsute monster could be Santa, so we just tuned it all out.

I mean, every day Krampus would Tweet something insane like, “My favorite drink is the tears of children” and “my favorite music, their screams.” We were like, okay yeah, this dude is clearly off his damn rocker. We’d retweet Krampus all the time. Honestly, his account is still one of the funniest in my feed, but I just don’t have the heart to laugh about it anymore.

Even when Krampus hosted SNL, I was still like “Okay, this is terrible, but there’s no way The Horned God of the Witches is ever going to become Santa. No way!” I mean, we’re talking about the cloven-hoofed, chain swinging host of Celebrity Satan. Gary Busey’s buddy in charge of determining who’s been naughty or nice? Inconceivable.

Maybe it’s the party’s fault for ignoring how unpopular Mrs. Claus was as a candidate for Santa. Maybe they should’ve nominated that old ass elf that was always yelling about the top 1% of naughty kids. I’ll admit that’s who I voted for in the North Pole primaries. But as soon as he was out of the picture, I was with Mrs. Claus all the way.

I’ll confess I live in a major urban city with a lot of privileged elves, but I don’t think we live in a bubble. Except for the times we’re literally in a giant bubble we made out of children’s laughter. In that case, yeah, we’re totally in a bubble and it’s fun as hell. But it’s true that we were not fully aware of how many pissed off blue collar elves were out there. That’s on us. And even if that’s not the whole story of this election, it’s like, go ahead and try comforting yourself with finger-pointing when you’re getting stuffed into the punishment-sack.

Who knows, maybe Putin did interfere with the election. He totally looks like a dude who would think, “You know who’s got some great ideas? Krampus.”

Anyway, it’s not even Krampus that I’m really worried about, it’s his cabinet. I mean his actual cabinet, the one filled with all those snowglobes that are actually prisons for souls. Like, who thinks of stuff like that? I mean yeah, his mentally unhinged team of policy advisors is deeply concerning too, but those snowglobes? Ummm, check please!

Who’s going to run for Santa in 2020? Perchta? Maybe. And maybe by then we’ll finally be ready to accept a Santa who is neither a portly fellow, nor a terrifying hell-beast. Until then, we’ve all just got to come together and be as nice to each other as possible. I’m not trying to preach here, I’m just saying if we don’t unify and learn to love each other, Krampus is going to trap our souls in a snowglobe. So, yeah, just keep that in mind.