Everyone loves Christmas because of the quality time we spend with family, the delicious food we eat, and presents under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning but not only good kids get presents. What about the bad kids, what do they get?

Some bad kids get coal, but others get visited by monsters such as “The Krampus.” “Krampus” is an Austrian monster that visits bad kids at night. Austria is a closed-in country in Central Europe, up in the Eastern Alps but it is not stored away from Christmas monsters like “Krampus”. According to the website ‘The Guardian,’ The Krampus is “a demonic half-goat monster with horns and a long tongue.” It’s said that “he drags chains behind him as he walks and rattles them ominously. He carries a birch to whip bad children and sometimes a basket or sack for kidnapping them.” It is stated by, “VISIT CROATIA” that the “Krampus” looks like he’s “half-goat, half-demon” and he “has long horns, claws, and a goat-like beard.” This horrifying creature harms bad kids for fun so I would advise you to listen, especially now.

Everyone loves Christmas; around this time we eat candy canes, Christmas cookies, and gingerbread men. But what about the gingerbread men who fight back? Have you ever heard the story about the gingerbread men “Lumpy, Dumpy and Clumpy”? As stated by the website, “Hornet,” Lumpy, Dumpy, and Clumpy are “three psychotic, giggling gingerbread men who lure hungry unsuspecting kids into getting impaled on hooks and then dragged up the chimney.” When I think about gingerbread men, I am always excited to hear about them but after what “Hornet” has told me, I will avoid these murderous cookies and so should you! And there are more violent Christmas foods.

We all know some foods are poisonous but what if I told you that there are foods that kill us on purpose? I have heard that Columbia is a place of many myths. According to my Columbian friend Natalie Cammon, when she was younger, her grandmother used to tell her story of the coconut with a machete. This coconut would, in her words, “sneak into kid’s rooms at night, bad kids, and he would kill them. But he would only kill them if they were bad, though.” All these stories are funny to me because I would have never thought about foods killing bad kids on Christmas. But foods are not the only ones doing that.

Iceland is a beautiful, mountainous, cold country and maybe Iceland was so cold that it froze Grýla’s heart. There is an Icelandic monster called “Grýla” and as stated by the website,” Mental Floss,” Grýla is an “Icelandic legend as the ogress who kidnaps, cooks, and eats children who don’t obey their parents.” For you to better understand, let me give you a visual. It is said by, “Vice”, that Grýla looks like a “sheep who walks like a human” and that sometimes “she has 300 heads, or a beard, or blue eyes on the back of her head.” She comes during Christmas like Santa but instead of giving gifts, she is taking bad kids. And as the famous Christmas song “Santa Claus is coming to town” goes, “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town.” But so is Grýla if you are a bad kid.

There is also another part of the song that goes, “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good…” but after what I told you about all these monsters, I think this song is a warning to all kids to be good… OR ELSE!