Seasons Beatings!!

HA! We went to Bloomington Indiana for the Krampus parade. It was fabulous!! I found out about the parade last year - two days AFTER it happened grrr!! I had to wait a whole year!! It was worth the wait. If you don't know who Krampus is - he is  part of Alpine folklore dating back to the  1800s- he punishes children for being bad. He carries "Ruten" which are birch branches painted gold to beat children - they also touch the naughty children's faces leaving an ashen mark that attracts bad dreams. Krumpus can even carry children away in a sack. We went too early - I was worried about parking. That made time for antiquing - always fun!! They have a few booths set up where Scott bought a shirt and I got a bundle of Ruten. We also got stickers

Then we made our way to the parade route. The parade starts with St Nicholas and his angels. They hand out candy to those with Nice stickers.Scott got candy - well the angel gave he naughty kids candy too - Scott asked why be nice if everybody gets candy? See, he is the troublemaker.

 St Nicholas is behind the angel  - I never got a good picture of him.

Then the Krampus start arriving

 this truck has wood on it to make it look like a sled or box - there are children in the back. One of them cried out as they passed "this is not what I asked for for Christmas" and the Krampus growled loudly - it was pretty funny.

 look at those horns - scary!!

I got swatted several times - partly because Scott kept pushing me out into the street - he really should have been wearing the naughty sticker. Then one of them touched me - see my ashen mark. I really enjoyed the parade - Scott was getting tired of hearing about it. The costumes are fantastic. I'm already excited to go to the event next year!!
After the parade we ate at the Irish Lion - nope, I didn't take one picture. The food was fabulous though!! We will be going back! It was such a good night - we even got free parking!

I hope you haven't been bad enough to have the Krampus come for you.......