These 17 Creepy Origins Behind Christmas Traditions Are Genuinely Terrifying

I'm genuinely horrified by the nutcracker's origins...

1. Some European stories involve Krampus, a horned beast who kidnaps children (omg festive! x).

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Alpine folklore tells of Santa's evil counterpart; Krampus, a chain-dragging, birch-wielding, child-kidnapping half-goat monster. 

The 5th of December is Krampusnacht, a holiday that's still observed in some European countries. On the day, Krampuses storm through Alpine towns in evil-looking costumes — and as if the lore isn't scary enough, apparently the costume-wearers have been getting drunk and rowdy, ruining property.

2. Carollers used to break into landlords' homes and demand their best food and wine.

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Forget trick or treat — the truly terrifying door-to-door celebrations of the 1700s came from carollers. Bands of young men went to lords' doors demanding their best food and drink by any means necessary, singing lyrics like "We've come here to claim our right / And if you don't open up your door / We'll lay it flat upon the floor...". 

One landowner from Salem took the carollers, or wassailers, to court in 1679. His suit claimed "they threw stones, bones, and other things... They continued to throw stones for an hour and a half with little intermission. They also broke down about a pole and a half of fence, being stone wall, and a cellar, without the house, distant about four or five rods, was broken open through the door, and five or six pecks of apples were stolen.”

3. It was once illegal to celebrate Christmas.

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In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony literally banned Christmas with the Penalty for Keeping Christmas. The reasoning was that “festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries” were a “great dishonor of God and offence of others.” 

If you were found not working on the day or, God forbid, “feasting," you would have had to "pay for every such offence five shillings.” That's about $48 today.

4. The idea for tinsel could come from spiderwebs.

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An old European story went that a widowed mother was too poor to pay for Christmas tree decorations, so some kind spiders spun beautiful webs over their tree which shone silver and gold in the morning light.

Some say this story inspired the invention of tinsel, and some Ukranian and German homes will decorate their tree with a jewelled spider thanks to the tale.

5. Mince pies (or “tartes of flesh” as they were called in 1390) used to contain real meat. Puritans also attempted to ban them altogether.

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In fact, according to a 1390 cookbook, they were made with pork, hard-boiled eggs, and cheese, spices, saffron, and sugar. Then, in 1615, the recipe became an entire leg of mutton and three pounds of suet go in, along with salt, cloves, mace, currants, raisins, prunes, dates, and orange peel.

Some say that under Puritan Cromwell, the pies were banned in England for being too frivolous and luxurious. However, though Washington Irving wrote in 1850 about “the fiery persecution of poor mince pie throughout the land, when plum porridge was denounced as mere popery," this wasn't true — the bill never passed.

6. Allow me to introduce you to Mari Lwyd, a festive horse skull.

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The Welsh tradition, which is still observed in some towns, may come from a folk tale about a mare that wandered for days while Mary had Jesus in what was originally the horse's stable. The story goes that the horse was looking for somewhere to birth her own foal. Ultimately, though, nobody is sure about the origins.

What IS for sure is that a horse skull, draped with a cloak and crowned with flowers and lights, is traipsed through some Welsh villages "between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night" to this day.  

7. The Nutcracker is a beautiful ballet — based on a truly terrifying kid's story.

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Ever heard of "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann? Well, it's the tale on which the ballet is based — and its terrifying plot starts when a seven-year-old girl slices her arm open after being shocked by seeing her toy nutcracker come to life. 

Her grandfather (or so it seems) tells her a story about a man cursed by a witch to become an ugly nutcracker, to which the child (Marie) says she'd marry him anyway. So, she gets taken to the toy kingdom to actually marry the nutcracker.

"Marie is a specter of a character, a girl who exists only to take care of her imagined prince, a girl who vanishes, disempowered and subjugated, to a kingdom ruled by dolls," reads a Salon article on the story. 

8. Oh, your town doesn't have a festive visit from a cannibalistic scarecrow who roams the fields searching for children? Sounds like you're in need of a Hans Trapp.

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He's another of Europe's evil counterparts to Santa, and hoo boy, IS he evil. The story goes that he made deals with the devil to make money, and was eventually excommunicated from the church before wandering the fields of Alsace as a scarecrow. In one story, he slices and eats a child before being struck by lightning by God, who apparently thought this was the final (sorry) straw.

Parents warned their kids every Christmas that the monster would come, abduct some badly behaved children, and drag them into the forest, never to be seen again.

9. Santa comes down the chimney for lots of spooky, supernatural reasons.

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If there's one thing evil creatures liked to do in old-timey folk tales, it was come down chimneys. Witches did it. Goblins did it. In fact, in 19th-century Pennsylvania, Dwight's Belsnickel did it, too — and the creature would whip children who had been naughty, the legend goes. Terrifying.

10. The tradition of making a gingerbread home at Christmas supposedly comes from the deeply spooky (and cannibalistic) Hansel and Gretel fairytale.

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In the original fairytale, the house was made from bread and the roof was cake — but over time, the story became that the whole house was made of gingerbread, possibly inspiring the Christmas tradition.

But the story isn't exactly comforting. It focuses on two abandoned children who face death at the evil hands of a cannibalistic witch, before eventually fooling her into climbing into her own oven — bit much for a family activity, no?

11. Mistletoe was once used to pardon criminals.

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Back in the day, the priest of York Minster used mistletoe to forgive criminals.  Holding up sprigs of the plant, he would offer "Public and universal liberty, pardon and freedom of all sorts of inferior and wicked people at the minster gates, and the gates of the city, towards the four quarters of heaven" — look, I'd consider kissing him too under those circumstances.

12. Leaving out milk and cookies for Santa is a tradition that blew up in the hardships of the Great Depression.

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Per the History Channel, the Norse tradition really took off in the US the 1930s — when America was going through a huge financial depression. But "In that time of great economic hardship, many parents tried to teach their children that it was important to give to others and to show gratitude for the gifts they were lucky enough to receive on Christmas," History Channel says. Look, I'd want a cookie too if I'd scraped together enough cash to buy my kids presents in a recession...

13. We could leave out stockings because of an old myth about poverty.

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Donald E. Dossey's book Holiday Folklore, Phobias, and Fun links the tradition to the story of a 4th-century bishop, who overheard a distressed old man fretting that he didn't have enough to give all three of his daughters a dowry. That was a big deal, because unmarried women (and women without a dowry would often stay unmarried) often became destitute.

So, the story goes that St Nicholas (the OG Santa) snuck down the family's chimney and stuffed the drying stockings by the fire with gold. 

14. Baubles could derive from decorations that were created to deter witches.

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Once known as yule balls or faerie balls, the spherical ornaments were originally shiny and filled with thread or glass. They came to the US in the 17th century via England. They were designed to entrap evil spirits, and some say our baubles come from the tradition.

15. The "Good King Wenceslas" from a Christmas carol about helping someone in a snowstorm was based on a real person — who died horribly.

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Despite the wholesome message in the song, Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia  (born in 907 AD) had a pretty gruesome death. On the 28th of September 935, his brother Boleslaus, tired of sharing the country with his sibling, plotted his demise. He — along with noblemen Tira, Česta, and Hněvsa — stabbed and lanced him in a church as he was praying, ultimately dismembering him in front of the holy building. 

16. "Toasting" drinks comes from a frankly gross-sounding food tradition.

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Would you dunk your toasted bread in a shared bowl of wine and eat it? No? Well, you wouldn't have fit in at a 14th-century Christmas party, as that's exactly what Wassailers (carolers) liked to do back in the day. 

In fact, one chant went "Wassail, wassail, all over the town / Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown." And you thought mince pies were weird...

17. In Iceland, the Yule Lads take the place of Santa — and stories about their punishments for badly-behaved kids were once so creepy, it became illegal to tell them to children.

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Now, the celebrations just mean kids leave shoes out and are either rewarded with candy or rotten potatoes (basically the stockings tradition, if you think about it). 

But historically, parents tormented their children with horror stories of the Yule Lads (whose names include Meat Hook, Doorway-Sniffer, and Window-Peeper) so badly that it became illegal to tell the tales to kids in 1746.

Can you think of any other examples? Let us know in the comments below!