Christmas traditions Steyr PART 1 - Perchten

Steyr is a christmas town. Why? Because a place of pilgrimage next to Steyr is called Christkindl (Christkind). So we are the hometown of the Christkind in Austria. Therefore we celebrate christmas every year with a lot of traditionell celebrations.

One is called "Perchtenlauf".
We have Nikolaus (looks like Santa Claus, but is based on a real person called Nicolaus, he was a saint some hundred years ago). Nikolaus rewards well-behaved children, and the Krampus or Percht he comes for the not so well-behaved children ;)

Last weekend was this kind of Perchtenlauf in Steyr, here are some photos of this event (the photos are taken from e-steyr.com made by Peter Kainrath:







I heard, that there have been about 680 (!) different Perchten-masks, they came from all around Austria and even Germany. Quite scary, but the children love them, some are scared at the beginning, but learn fast that this are only masks and underneath are humans ;)
This is one tradition, more traditions in Part 2.