Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Companions of Saint Nicholas gathers three European folk figures who accompany or stand in for Saint Nicholas on his December visit, splitting his reward of good children from the discipline of bad ones, or in one case combining both roles himself.

Krampus, the horned and chain rattling figure of Alpine custom, handles the badly behaved children while the saint rewards the good, appearing in costumed public runs on the evening of the fifth of December ahead of the saint's own feast the next day. Knecht Ruprecht plays a related but gentler role in German folk custom, chiefly in central and southern Germany: shown as an older man in a ragged robe carrying a bag of ashes and a birch switch, he questions children on their prayers and behavior before Nicholas rewards or corrects them, and is generally read as a stern but loyal servant rather than a devil figure the way Krampus is. Belsnickel, kept among German speaking Palatinate communities and carried to North America by Pennsylvania German immigrants, combines both roles the other two split between them: he makes his rounds alone, interrogating children and rewarding or punishing them himself, scattering treats for children to scramble after while swatting at their hands or legs with his own switch.

Read together the three trace one custom's spread and variation: a single Alpine figure closest to a devil, a German figure who subordinates the same function to Nicholas himself, and a Palatinate figure who folds both the saint's reward and the companion's discipline into one man making his own rounds.