Originating in the Palatinate region of southwestern Germany, Belsnickel is an unpredictable, but generally crotchety, bringer of gifts for the children at Christmas.
He dresses in ragged, tattered and dirty clothes trimmed with assorted and unfinished furs. Sometimes he wears a mask.He carries a switch with which to threaten beatings to children who have been bad, but also arrives with pockets loaded with sweets, fruits and nuts for gifting to the good children.
In the weeks preceding Christmas, he moves door-to-door through the community. In each household, he rants and raves, and gently menaces all those in attendance. And, at the climax of his antics, after the children answer his questions or sing him a song, he tosses his treats onto the floor, triggering a delightful scramble by the children.
Jacob Brown, writing in his “Miscellaneous Writings” of his personal encounters with Belsnickel as a child in the 1830s in Allegany County, Maryland, offers this description of the spirit’s antics.
“He was known as Kriskinkle, Beltznickle and sometimes as the Christmas woman. Children then not only saw the mysterious person, but felt him or rather his stripes upon their backs with his switch.
“The annual visitor would make his appearance some hours after dark, thoroughly disguised, especially the face, which would sometimes be covered with a hideously ugly phiz – generally wore a female garb – hence the name Christmas woman – sometimes it would be a veritable woman but with masculine force and action.
“He or she would be equipped with an ample sack about the shoulders filled with cakes, nuts, and fruits, and a long hazel switch which was supposed to have some kind of a charm in it as well as a sting. One would scatter the goodies upon the floor, and then the scramble would begin by the delighted children, and the other hand would ply the switch upon the backs of the excited youngsters – who would not show a wince, but had it been parental discipline there would have been screams to reach a long distance.”
The Belsnickel tradition came to America with the Pennsylvania Dutch, who settled in southeastern Pennsylvania.
The tradition also has proven popular with craft brewing companies. Among them, Stoudt’s Brewing Company, of Adamstown, Pennsylvania, brews a seasonal dark lager called Belsnickle and Otto’s Pub and Brewery, of State College, Pennsylvania, brews a Belsnickle ale.
