POTTSVILLE \u2014 Unlike Santa Claus, the Belsnickel doesn\u2019t make a list and check it twice to see which kids were naughty or nice.<\/p>\n
Nor does he give kids a warning that they should not cry or pout, as Santa does in the lyrics of the Christmas classic \u201cSanta Claus is Coming to Town.\u201d<\/p>\n
No, the Belsnickel just shows up unannounced at kids\u2019 houses anytime in the weeks before Christmas.<\/p>\n
And his method is much more direct than jolly old Santa\u2019s \u2014 the Belsnickel rewards good kids with goodies from his bag, but the bad kids get a tap of a switch to remind them to be good next year.<\/p>\n
Such is the legend of the Belsnickel, a fearsome figure that lives on in Pennsylvania Dutch lore.<\/p>\n
Imported from the Palatinate region of Germany in the 18th Century, the Christmastime custom is no longer widely practiced.<\/p>\n
Keith Brintzenhoff, a Pennsylvania Dutch folklorist, keeps the legend alive in appearances like the one he recently made at the Schuylkill County Historical Society.<\/p>\n
With a face covered in soot, wearing a fur hat, a shabby mink stole thrown over his shoulders and a coat so long it nearly touched the floor, the crotchety Belsnickel cut a figure that would make Scrooge look like a nice guy.<\/p>\n
The furry attire, Brintzenhoff explained, was in keeping with the literal translation of Belsnickel, which is a \u201cfurry St. Nicholas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Belsnickel was around for generations before illustrator Thomas Nast popularized the current image of Santa Claus as a kindly rotund old man in a white beard in the December 1862 issue of Harper\u2019s Weekly.<\/p>\n
Brintzenhoff, a well-known Berks County folklorist, musician and storyteller, bantered in Pennsylvania Dutch with some of the 50 or so people at the historical society.<\/p>\n
\u201cAch du lieber,\u201d or \u201cOh, My Goodness,\u201d he\u2019d reply, suggesting a surprising detail of the conversation. Everybody laughed.<\/p>\n
When he waved a four-pronged switch at a \u201cnaughty\u201d person, a woman in the audience called out \u201cYou\u2019ll poke their eye out.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to escape the similarity of the comment to the warning Ralphie gets in \u201cA Christmas Story\u201d when he asks for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.<\/p>\n
Invariably, even the naughty ones in attendance got a gift from the Belsnickel\u2019s sack for being good sports.<\/p>\n
The really good people got an orange \u2014 kids would find an orange in their Christmas stockings into the 1950s. Others received peppermint candy, walnuts or pecans and candy root beer barrels.<\/p>\n
The Belsnickel read the \u201cPennsylvania Dutch Night Before Christmas,\u201d a parody of Clement C. Moore\u2019s classic, where cows pull a \u201csleigh plow\u201d and kids \u201cschnuggle\u201d in their beds awaiting Santa\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n
Keith Brintzenhoff has lectured on the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect and culture at Kutztown University. With the Toad Creek Ramblers, he recorded hoedown music and performed at the Kempton Community Center. He was a fixture for decades at the former Kutztown Folk Festival.<\/p>\n
The German-Pennsylvania Association presented Brintzenhoff with a lifetime achievement award for his work in the field of Pennsylvania German culture and language in 2017. His efforts were recognized by the association\u2019s president, Frank Kessler of Belgium, and its vice president, Michael Werner of Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"POTTSVILLE \u2014 Unlike Santa Claus, the Belsnickel doesn\u2019t make a list and check it twice to see which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5527,182,139,28,30,29,231],"class_list":{"0":"post-61823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-christmas","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","13":"tag-pennsylvania-news","14":"tag-schuylkill-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}