"Krampus" by Brom is a little funny, a little scary, unexpectantly heartwarming at times, and a lot deeper than I assumed it would be when I picked it up. It's a thoughtful meditation on how history is really written by the winners.
So modern-day Christmas takes many of its cues and traditions straight from an old pagan festival called Yule. You can still hear references to Yule in Christmas terminology and in certain Christmas carols. This all happened because as Christianity spread north from the middle east and converted the pagan peoples there, this combining of Christmas, a holiday about the birth of Christ, with the beloved native traditions of Yule, was a sort of compromise.
In any case, it's hard to conceive of the violence of forced conversion, second hand and from dry history texts. Fiction, acting as a shortcut to understanding, though, is helpful in understanding something on an emotional level. "Krampus" does just that. It makes you feel what it's like to have one's culture erased and twisted, to have their very soul recast to service the dominating culture.
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Author’s Website: https://www.bromart.com/
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