Once upon a time, in the early 2000s, my husband at the time and I were taking down the Christmas tree when he grabbed something and asked: "what the $@%& is this?" I replied "an ornament." "No, look at it," he said. I looked at it and answered again "a Santa ornament." I just wanted to get the tree put away. I don't remember what he said at that point but I do remember taking a closer look and being very surprised.
The ornament depicts a sinister Santa stuffing a small child into the present bag with a look of horror upon the child's face. Nice. We both accused the other of putting the ornament on the tree but neither one of us had done it. The next suspect was my brother. Our family has a special brand of colorful, yet dry humor, so it made sense that he planted it there when his family was over during the holiday season. He denied it also. We went through a very short list of friends who had visited and no one took credit for the evil spawn of Satan Santa.
Instead of packing up the ornament with everything else, we decided to keep it out to try and figure out where it came from. This is where the real story begins. Since I was pretty sure my brother was lying when he said he didn't plant evil Santa, I waited and planted it at his house the next time I was there. I figured that would be the end of it. If that had been the end of it, we probably would have forgotten about this ornament a long time ago. Months passed and the ornament was back at my house in some strange place. That is how it has gone on for all of these years, back and forth, and back and forth. Months will pass with nothing, and then you open something you don't normally use, and there is Santa waiting for you. The ornament has turned up in bedding, underwear drawers, in a sewing box, grocery bags, inside presents, just about everywhere and anywhere you can imagine. I once called my brother and told him I was mailing a packet of pictures, you know, back when people had them developed. I wasn't sending pictures. I traced Santa on a piece of cardboard of equal thickness, cut it out perfectly, and inserted the ornament. That was stuffed inside of a card and I wrote something humorous on it, I'm sure. The ornament was lost for a couple of years because the ex-husband had put it on a high ledge in a room with a vaulted ceiling at my brother's house. Thankfully, my brother found it when he was painting before putting the house on the market.
The ornament has gone back and forth countless times and we do it all year long. It has turned into a challenge to see who can hide it the longest without it being found. We've become pretty good at our hides, so the ornament only moves once or twice a year. Aside from the time it was lost on the ledge, my brother and his wife hold the current record for the longest hide. I think it was in a box of noodles for a few months. My husband went to make pasta and we ended up having evil Santa join us for dinner.
My brother's wife is credited with naming the ornament "Krampus." She called it by that name a few years ago and it stuck. I honestly have no idea how Krampus made its way to my Christmas tree all those years ago, but it has evolved into a spectacular game and tradition that may well last the rest of our lives.
Krampus, in all of his evil glory
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