CHRISTMAS MONSTERS: THE PHILADELPHIA PARADE OF SPIRITS IN CONTEXT
Open Access
- Author:
- Hutcheson, Cory Thomas
- Graduate Program:
- American Studies
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 12, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Simon J. Bronner, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Anthony Bak Buccitelli, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Rogers Haddad, Committee Member
Simon J. Bronner, Committee Member
Mary Napoli, Outside Member - Keywords:
- folklore
festival
holidays
American Studies - Abstract:
- In December 2011, Philadelphia’s Liberty Lands Park began hosting an annual event called the Krampuslauf. The communities involved modeled this processional festival around a traditional European event featuring a masked, costumed holiday monster called the Krampus. The Krampuslauf, later renamed the Parade of Spirits, brings together several groups from Philadelphia and Central Pennsylvania. The neighborhood around the park, a community of contemporary neo-Pagans, and an active arts-and-crafts community in the area adopted the Philadelphia Parade of Spirits as a representative festival. Using ethnographical methods and analyzing the communities as folk groups practice a form of social drama through the parade form, I argue that in Philadelphia and similar locations like Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California, the Krampus and other “Christmas monster” figures are being re-contextualized in an American capitalist environment as a way of critiquing the commercialism of the holiday season by those who wish to find personal meaning in seasonal ritual without conforming to mainstream Christmas practices. I simultaneously argue that the festival meets the social and symbolic needs of multiple communities at once, while also providing a unique reflexivity from the folk groups as they negotiate the expansion of the festival and the meaning of winter holidays in the United States.