#Pere Fouettard

[thegenxorcist]

Pere Fouettard

Pere Fouettard means “Father Whip” in French. This character is also known as Hans Trapp in Alsace; Ruprecht in German folklore, Zwarte Piet in Dutch folklore, and Houseker in Luxembourg). He is a shady figure who goes out with Saint Nicholas on or about December 6th. Pere Fouettard gives children who are disrespectful spankings, while Saint Nicholas gives them presents. The delivery of coal or beets has taken on the role of spankings in several parts of France and Belgium.

Although depictions of Pere Fouettard may vary somewhat from country to country, he is often represented as a frightening figure, dressed in fur, with a long beard, a gloomy visage, and untidy hair. He often carries a whip, a staff, or a bunch of twigs for protection. He threatens to stuff rebellious kids in his big bag and haul them away if they don’t behave or say their prayers...

Pere Fouettard: A Bogeyman, Polar Opposite of Santa Claus

[frosted-night]

Father Butcher, The Cannibal Frenchman(Loremas post#2)

(A fair warning as this legend contains child murder and cannibalism)

You'd be surprised to hear that there are two cannibal french xmas spirits, which isn't a lot but weird that its happened more than once.

His name is Pere Fouettard, translated from french as "Father Whipper", but he's also called "Old Man Whipper" by some. His region(s) of origin are North-Eastern parts of France and Southern Belgium.

He is often described as a sinister shaggy looking man with unkempt hair and beard carrying a backpack of switches. It varies on what he carries, like all bad cop spirits that accompany St.Nick.

His story however surprised me in my research and it goes as follows with occasional variations:

"Three young boys were off by themselves to finalize their enrollment in a prestigious religious boarding school, when they are approached by a butcher, sometimes an innkeeper, that lures the boys over. He offers the boys some food, as one version describes, but the children quickly discover that the seemingly harmless man drugged them. He and his wife were said to have slit the children's throats, cut them into pieces and store their dismembered bodies into a barrel to stew for dinner that night.

St.Nicholas overheard the commotion and discovered the horrific fate of the young children. He opened the barrel and resurrected the young boys. Pere Fouettard's reaction varies on which telling you read. Some say he regretted his actions and became a servant of St.Nicholas to repent. Another says St.Nicholas was so disgusted by Fouettard's actions, that he forced the butcher into servitude."

So yeah, kind of an understatement that this guy might be one of the creepiest coworkers that St.Nicholas has. Good for any need for a villain in narratives surrounding North, or to be the reluctant servant character. Does he deserve a chance to repent? That's up to the writer.

[nobleclover]

A dark Christmas poem for you all. Merry Christmas 🎄😈

https://youtu.be/uKR0ov0NgrA

[martinezgio13wfwf]

[weirdchristmas]

We feel your pain. So do these kids.

And the kids terrified by the threat of St. Nick's judgment and Krampus' punishment:

LIFE IS SUFFERING BUT YOU MUST PRETEND TO BE HAPPY!

[santaverse]

Secret Santa are you getting prepared for the big night of Dec 24th if so are you prepared one step ahead plans in case Gruzzlebeard try to mess with your Christmas because the last time that happened he nearly succeeded.

" There's no need to worry about Gruzzlebeard! While you're certainly right that he has made numerous attempts to cancel Christmas, his schemes never succeed! The Spirit of Christmas is far too strong to let any one person diminish it! "

" Besides, Gruzzlebeard will have his hands full this year, won't you Gruzzlebeard? "

" Yeah, YEAH, don't go rubbin' it in ya jolly ol' jellybelly! I HATE Christmas just as much as I HATE goin' on a sleigh ride with yer sappy self!! "

" Now, now, Gruzzlebeard! You play an important role in Christmas, you know! It just wouldn't be Christmas without you! "

" ...It wouldn't? "

" Of course, not! Who else better to teach Naughty children than the Naughtiest individual I know? "

" D'aww stop, yer just butterin' me up!! Okay, okay, just check that dang list twice already so we can get this thang started! My coal ain't gonna deliver itself! "

" It helps to keep him busy, hohoho! Thank you for your question! "

[kingmakerpod]

A local equivalent to Krampus or Pere Fouettard in the VSR is the sinister scarecrow Strohknochen (straw-bones in English). Said to be a disgraced knight who survived execution through use of the dark art of necromancy, Strohknochen is a helper to St. Nicholas who eats misbehaving children on Christmas Eve. Christmas pageants and wassailing traditions in Valor often involve complex Strohknocken puppets animated by artifice.

[mask131]

Cold winter: Père Fouettard

PERE FOUETTARD

Category: French culture

Krampus isn’t the only “punisher” or “negative character” of the European Christmas season. If you go a bit more north of the “Krampus territory”, you’ll find a “cousin” of his: Père Fouettard, present in most French-speaking countries.

Père Fouettard is a name meaning literally “Father Whipper” or “Father Whipping” ; even though it can also be taken as “Old Man Whipper”. The Père Fouettard started out as a Saint Nicholas day character, acting as the “dark” companion of Nicholas the same way Krampus does – in fact, Père Fouettard is found in the areas in which Saint Nicholas’ day are celebrated the most, from Northern and Eastern France to Southern Belgium. It is quite funny when you look at Switzerland, which is a country cut in two – its French part has Père Fouettard, while its German part has the Krampus. Battle of the dark companions, I guess!

Unlike the Krampus, which is a bestial demon, the Père Fouettard is much more human looking. He is a grim and sinister man with a long usually scraggly beard, unkempt hair, and dark robes. His main punishment, as his name says, is whipping naughty or misbehaving children: he usually carries with him a whip, a large stick or a bundle of switches to inflict said punishment. But sometimes, just like for the Krampus, he also has a wicker backpack, a big basket in which he puts “bad children” to take them away – and never be seen again…

When it comes to the “origins” of Père Fouettard, two different stories are usually talked about.

One is the “folkloric” story: as time went by, the figure of Père Fouettard was linked with a specific story related to Saint Nicholas’ very own legend. In the life of Saint Nicholas, it is said that one day the holy man stopped at the house of a butcher (or innkeeper). He looked at where the butcher kept his meat (or the butcher offered him some of his meat), and the saint thanks to his holy powers discovered the atrocious truth: the meat kept by the butcher wasn’t human. It was the corpse of three little children the butcher had lured and killed in his house before cutting them into pieces. The horrified and angry saint then used his powers to resurrect the children. In the original story we never know what happens to the wicked butcher, beyond him being horrified by Nicholas’ powers and the saint revealing his crime – but folklore decided to give him an “ending” by having him be the same as the Père Fouettard. Some say that his role as “Father Whipper” is a punishment inflicted on him by Saint Nicholas, others rather claim that the butcher repented and agreed to become “Father Whipper” on his own, but all in all this tradition claims that the Father Whipper is a religious/folkloric figure of an evil man trying to be purified from his own sins by punishing naughty children and helping Saint Nicholas in his yearly work.

The second story usually brought up is the “historical” one: an attempt at explaining the apparition of the Père Fouettard through historical facts. This story/theory claims that the Père Fouettard was created after the end of the historical Siege of Metz (an event taking place mid-16th century during the Franco-Italian wars, Metz being one of the most prominent cities of Eastern France). The end of the Siege coincided with the Christmas season (it stopped on the 1st of January) – ad during the Siege, the inhabitants of the city had made a replica of the enemy king, Charles V, that they burned and dragged around the city as a mockery of those that besieged them. The “arrival of Saint Nicholas” “freeing” the city was somehow mixed with the memory of the burnt Charles V figure – and might also have been mixed with a local legend invented by the tanners of Metz to scare children away, about a man with a whip punishing children – and so popular folklore reinvented the burnt evil man defeated by Christmas as the Père Fouettard, the nasty companion of Saint Nicholas.

- - - - -

There is more to say about the Père Fouettard, but I’ll probably keep it for a future additional post.

From my personal experience, I can tell you that the Père Fouettard grew well beyond its original role. In fact, for the longest time I ignored Fouettard’s ties with Saint Nicholas: when I first heard about him, he was described as basically being the bogeyman. In fact, bogeyman (croquemitaine) was just described to me as the category of beings to which the Père Fouettard belonged, and he was described as the dark creepy man that would be called upon by parents to punish or take away naughty children, all year long.

Apparently this idea of the “Père Fouettard bogeyman” was the one that crossed over the Atlantic: indeed, an English version of Père Fouettard appeared in the United-States around the 1930s, as “Spanky” or “Father Flog”, but with two main differences. 1) Father Flog was not a Christmas figure, but a general bogeyman. 2) Father Flog worked alongside a female sidekick, Mother Flog. From what I read, the gimmick of the Flog duo was to give to children specific punishment fitting their crimes (for example if you lied, Father Flog would cut your tongue) – but I don’t know more about them…

[vlkrmermaid]

Fifty-Two Weeks Of Halloween Prompt 44

Photo by Juan Felipe Ramu00edrez on Pexels.com Pere Fouettard

[gungieblog]

 Krampus

Everyone’s favorite half-goat half-demon—with shaggy fur, phallic horns, a long curved tongue and fangs—hails from a pre-Christian pagan past; some scholars think he might even be an incarnation of the Devil or at least “the Horned God of the Witches.” Either way, he’s a lot like Pere Fouettard in that he’s Santa’s evil sidekick: He wears chains, leaves coal as “gifts” and whips unruly children with birch reeds, carrying off the really bad ones in his wicker basket so he can drown, eat or literally send them to Hell. Field trip!!!

If you’re looking to get on Krampus’ good side, rumor is he likes big-breasted women and schnapps.

[simulacrumofreverie]

“Boy, whatever you do, do not open this door” The boy's father warned him in a near whisper as he looked outside through one of the windows in their living room. It had snowed for nearly 3 days without pause and there seemed to be no rest in sight. The boy could only think back to gloomy memory to before the snow began, when his poor mother had warned his father of the terrible thing that now awaited them outside their home.

“I told you that all of us had to be good during the Yuletide or else HE would come!” The boy's mother had screeched at his father.

“I know! But we have no money and I couldn’t let us just starve! I had no choice!” The father yelled back furiously. The boy's mother had refused to let him eat any of the food that his father had stolen with the help of a few neighbors from the Stroud farm nearby.

“Who’s coming momma?” He asked fearfully. “It’s name is Père Fouettard” his mother said somberly. The boy looked at his mother confused as he tried to pronounce the name. Shaking, his mother hugged him close as she looked at her husband in fear. “Thats his ancient name. We know him as Father Whipper, and he’s come to punish those that dare sin during the Yuletide”.

The terror had started when the snow began. A figure shrouded in tattered robes stalked the town. The boy could see as he peeked out a window that the figure wore a cloak made from tanned, leather faces. The faces varied between young and old, women and men of all ethnicity. The figure oddly enough was quite visible through the thick blanket of snow that obscured everything else in vision. A leather mask akin to the face of a bearded man hid the figure's true visage. The long tendril of a well-worn whip dragged behind the fiendish figure, and despite the snow the sound of the trailing whip and the barbs that covered it scraping against the cobblestone streets throughout town kept all the townsfolk on edge. The sound was oddly deafening despite everyone being indoors. One of the neighbors that had helped the boy's father steal the food, a young man no older than 30, had been caught in the snow as it began to fall. Yelling out for help, the man was in view of many of the neighbors’ houses, including thw boy's, but none dared to open their door. As he continued to yell for help, being hopelessly lost in the thick blanket of snow, the young man came face to face with the terror. The man attempted to run away through the knee deep snow but a flick of Father Whipper’s gnarled wrist sent its whip sailing through the air and right at the man, with the whip wrapping itself with unnatural precision around the man’s leg. The barbs dug in deep and with one more flick of its wrist, Father Whipper pulled the man's footing from underneath him. The man’s screams were but muffled mews through the veil of steadily falling snow. The neighbors from the view of their windows watched as Father Whipper, with strike after strike of its whip, tore the flesh bit by bit from the man’s body until only bloody bones remained. Everyone knew those that had stolen or had eaten from the stolen food would soon feel Father Whipper’s wrath, and their faces would be added to his cloak. As her thoughts lingered on her hopeless husband, the mother realized that her son had wandered off from her view. Panicked, she quickly ran through the house and found him in the kitchen finishing off an apple from the stolen food. She began to shake uncontrollably as tears fell from her eyes. She looked at her beautiful son and realized what awaited him. “I’m sorry momma, but I was soo hungry” the boy said to her as he looked up from the food he had already finished off. All the boy's mother could do was hold him tight as they waited for the horror to come for them too.

[benito-cereno]

The Alphabet of Christmas, by Benito Cereno and Chuck Knigge, day 6: F is Fouettard and the whip that he carries

Père Fouettard is the companion of either Saint Nicholas or Père Noël in some regions of France, especially in the northern and eastern, as well as some parts of Belgium that border France. His name means “Father Whipper,” and as you can imagine, he, like the Krampus, is another dark counterpart to Saint Nicholas, meant to punish the naughty by bringing them a bundle of switches rather than a gift, and possibly using those switches as well.

According to legend, Père Fouettard was the butcher who killed three young traveling scholars in order to steal their money before Saint Nicholas raised them from the dead, thereby assuring his role as the protector of the young, and impressed the butcher into his service to earn penance. You can read a version of that story by me here.

You can listen to a beautifully sleazy song (in French) about the son of Père Fouettard trying to get into the pants of the daughter of Père Noël here.

F is also for:

Flossie and Fearless, reindeer

Previous letters here.

[i-love-red-velvet-pancakes]

Thing I do if you were my friend 6~6

1. Send you this picture so many times it’s ingrained in your head.

2. Send you ships and self made Hetalia memes. Ex:

3. Force you into the Hetalia fandom by sending pics and gifs

4. Never stop referencing anime, vines, and memes.

So I’m a basic troll under your bed with a laptop.

Fun fact: In France there’s Father Christmas and his companion Father Whipper. Father Whipper is a man who goes around whipping bad children. His name in French is Père Fouettard. Father Christmas’ name in French is Père Noël. Au revoir…

[marielashlinn]

12 Monsters of Christmas: 4 - Hans Trapp, Belsnickel, Knecht Ruprecht and Père Fouettard are all pretty similar weird old “helpers” who instead of bringing presents will beat bad children with sticks or sometimes eat them. I feel like probably this is something they should work on in therapy and maybe they could re-channel whatever is going on and express it through crafts or something.

[fransharp]

Christmas Weirdness Day Seven: Pere Fouettard

Today we wrap up the companions and counterparts of St. Nicholas. It brings us to this creepy f***er, Pere Fouettard.

In the story of Pere Fouettard, the antagonist is a butcher living close to a school for rich kids. One day he and his wife lure three children into his shop hoping to rob them. They feed the children poisoned sweets, slit their throats, and then Pere Fouettard cut them into pieces, added them to the curing barrels and salted them down (waste not, want not, I guess). So yeah, this traditional French holiday story includes cannibalism!

But don't worry, the story has a happy ending. St. Nicolas becomes aware of the crime and resurrects the children (which is why depictions of him with children in a barrel are popular in France) and then enslaves Pere Fouettard to be his assistant, scaring and punishing bad children while St. Nicholas rewards the good ones. And according to the French story, this is why St. Nicholas was canonized (guys, this was not why he was canonized and is probably super apocryphal).

Honestly, St. Nicholas has a surprising number of sidekicks, and I love how diverse they are. I picked some of the most creepy and controversial ones, but there are others. Here's an incomplete list of some of the ones I've covered as well as others. http://www.stnicholascenter.org/…/who-travels-with-st-nich…/