I’m a humbug.

I hate the holidays with a passion, probably because it hearkens back to the days where I was forced to spend time with my extended Catholic family, who were not all that good about being Catholic, but I tell you to give you a sense of the scope of the family. There were five siblings on my father’s side of the family (making him the sixth).

All but one of those siblings would drag their family members over to the grandparents every Christmas Eve to celebrate Christmas (the last lived on the West Coast). That equated to about 40 people, including kids, crammed into a house full of heavy-smoking drunkards when the temps were, on a good year, hovering on the order of 32F/0C. Approaching 0F/-18C was not uncommon. Going outdoors to escape, simply put, was not an option.

The reason I’m such a humbug was that, in general, I was the focal point for everyone’s trolling by the time I turned twelve or thirteen. I was the black sheep back then and I haven’t changed my status much in recent years be being one of the few members of the family to skip out on an in-person funeral of my aunt who died from coronavirus because…. coronavirus. I can only imagine the shit that got said about me for that decision, but I’m sure that, at best, it was condescending. It was probably worse. Fuck em.

But I didn’t go into this to bitch about my childhood, but to explain why I might have liked Christmas a lot better if I had known about Krampus and Krampusnacht. Then I could have imagined all my family members getting their just deserts from Krampus for terrorizing me every year instead of hiding away as far as possible from everyone until someone discovered my hiding place and ruined my solace and refuge.

Last night happened to be Krampusnacht.

How many of you had a visit from the horned one last night?