Christmas Cryptids

Before Christmas was merry, it was dark. And the dark was inhabited.

For most of European history, midwinter was a season to survive. The nights were longest, the larders thinnest, and the boundary between the living and the dead was believed to wear thin. Into that darkness folklore poured its most remarkable figures: Krampus, who carries the birch switches the saint will not; Frau Perchta, who inspects the spinning and punishes the idle; Iceland's Grýla, whose thirteen sons come down from the mountain one by one; the Yule Cat, which hunts anyone without new clothes; and the Mari Lwyd, a ribboned horse skull that knocks at the door and demands to rhyme its way inside.

Christmas Cryptids gathers twenty-four entries, from Iceland to Greece and Wales to Turkey: the watchers, the punishers, the devourers, the riding dead, and the tricksters who turned the season toward gifts. Each entry follows the folklore record, naming its sources and marking the uncertain points as uncertain, from a Norman priest's account of a ghostly host to the Krampus runs and Welsh door-knocking customs still kept today. A glossary explains the unfamiliar words, and a bibliography points the way to further reading.

Hang the wreath, light the candles, and leave something on the doorstep. It was never only Santa keeping accounts.