Belsnickel
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Belsnickel is the fur-clad Santa of the Palatinate (Pfalz) in southwestern Germany along the Rhine, the Saarland, and the Odenwald region of Baden-Württemberg.
In Pennsylvania Dutch communities, it is also a mythical being who visits children at Christmas time. If they have not been good, they will find coal and/or switches in their stockings. The Belsnickel was a scary creature not well loved except by parents wanting to keep their children in line.
Belsnickel is similar to Krampus in German-Austrian legend, except compared to Krampus, Belsnickel is rather benign. Belsnickel is a man wearing fur which covers his entire body, and he sometimes wears a mask with a long tongue. Krampus, on the other hand, is a demonic looking creature whose purpose is to scare children through his looks as well as his discipline techniques.
Among some families of German descent, Belsnickel delivers socks or shoes full of candy to children on the feast day of St. Nicholas, December 6. St. Nicholas is purported to have enabled the three daughters of a poor man to pay the dowries for their weddings. The poor man couldn’t afford his daughters’ dowries so Nicholas came to the man’s house at night and sneaked three sacks of gold into the house thus saving the daughters from the indignity of a solitary life or prostitution.
Belsnickel and Christkind are also found among population of Volga German descent in Argentina.
Spelling variations
In North America, it is often spelled Belsnickel, Belschnickel, Belznickle or Belznickel. In South America, it is spelled as it is in German language: Pelznikel.