Christmas? In Salem, it’s all about Father Krampus at Witchmas

It’s a frosty December evening at Pickering Wharf in Salem, Massachusetts, and I’m huddled with a bunch of dressed-up demons clad in heaped fur and horned hats outside Salem Ink tattoo parlour. Tonight marks Salem’s annual Krampusnacht celebration, perhaps best described as a pleasingly sinister alternative to St Nicholas Day.

The anthropomorphic figure of the Krampus derives from the central and eastern Alpine folkloric tradition, with the biggest and most tourist-friendly procession taking place in Salzburg, Austria. Instead of a Coca Cola-advert old white man generously bestowing gifts on “good” children, the hairy, horned and clawed demon Krampus parades through the streets brandishing birch twig whips, to terrify or thrill bad children and adults alike.

In Salem, this celebration has been taking place for over a decade, organised by Matt Richard, who works by day as a cadaver laboratory specialist at medical conferences, and by night as a goth/industrial events organiser through his company, DARQ Salem.

Richard is also co-founder of Zombiewalk, a highlight of Salem’s October Halloween calendar. “These events are about maintaining community and offering an outlet for people into a more alternative aesthetic,” he says, explaining that Salem’s growing reputation as a haven for more alternative lifestyles inspired him to start organising events 20 years ago.

It’s easy to make new friends when everyone is dressed as demons, witches and ghouls, and I quickly find myself chatting to Sarah Gillis, a local trade union worker with a black lace veil entirely over her face.

She tells me that Salem’s Krampusnacht is a December highlight for her and anyone who might feel alienated by the overtly commercial, Christian and conventional trappings of the season. Even as an outsider, it feels quite radical to be in a picturesque New England town that doesn’t resemble a heteronormative Hallmark Christmas movie; we’re a healthy mix of ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations and backgrounds.

“Our gathering tonight is a mixture of traditionalists tapping into our ancestral heritage, and folklorists, people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder and the local alternative scene,” Sarah explains, before handing me a spiced cider and telling me about other dark December events happening in Salem, such as the Grave Tidings Haunted Holiday Market in Salem’s Old Town Hall, which features “a curated selection of 50-plus of the area’s best spooky, dark, witchy, creepy and macabre artists, for one-of-a-kind holiday gifts”. I tell Sarah about my plans to visit the Satanic Temple but unfortunately, she can’t join me; she’s taking her nephews tobogganing.

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The parade pauses briefly at the local pinball and arcade bar, BitBar, which is adorned with Trans Pride flags (as is Salem Ink, the queer-owned tattoo parlour and art gallery). As we parade through the streets, ringing bells while the Krampus crew do some very gentle half-chasing of spectators, another faceless and behorned new friend says, “Honestly, the best thing about this night is the camaraderie. It’s just a great way to get out and meet other weirdos.”

In an eternally ironic reversal of its Puritan past, 21st-century Salem specialises in offering a warm welcome to weirdos. On Essex Street, adjacent to the graveyard and memorial to the 25 innocent victims of the 1692 witch trials – around half the businesses are, if not specifically witchy, witch-allied.

I buy a $6 latte in BlackCraft (blackcraftcult.com) and there are $22.99 leatherette coffin-shaped cardholder wallets and $22.99 black babygrow reading “Gothic Baby in Training”.

Around the corner on Washington Street – right next to the former home of Judge Hathorne, the most unpleasant and unrepentant of the Salem witch trials judges – sits HausWitch (hauswitchstore.com), described as “a metaphysical lifestyle store”, with $44 HausWarming spell kits, $27 Big Witch Energy spell candles, and $33 cat-shaped pillows.

Down at Pickering Wharf – near the docks that made Salem the sixth largest seaport in America by 1790, when it was also the nation’s wealthiest city – is Enchanted, owned by Salem’s most famous witch, Laurie Cabot (lauriecabot.com), and her daughter, Penny.

In the early 1970s, the popular sitcom Bewitched filmed several episodes on location in Salem, and fans flocked to the town, willing to spend money on supernatural souvenirs and anything that could be spun as a ghostly going-on. A smart and spiritually inclined solo mother, Cabot opened Salem’s first ever Witch Shoppe in 1971, petitioning the town’s mayor to make her the “official witch of Salem” – a title she was granted. Why not? The city was already known as “Witch City”, children are educated at Witchcraft Heights Elementary School, and the Salem High School athletic teams are known as the Salem Witches.

Salem’s evolution from witch-hunting to witch-hawking is gleefully recounted by my enthusiastic guide on the Haunted Footsteps Ghost Tour I pay $25 for, the day after Krampusnacht. “Laurie Cabot transformed tourism in the town of Salem, nobody can say otherwise,” he says. “Although things stalled a bit during the 1980s because of the ‘Satanic Panic’, we sort of gloss over this bit.”

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I’m not sure this should be glossed over, this scarily recent episode of moral hysteria (fanned by irresponsible media coverage, resulting in multiple miscarriages of justice where people were accused of satanic abuse) – not dissimilar to the witch trials of 1692. But I’m not the one running the witch tour. Anyway, I’m informed that by the 1990s, witch tourism was alive and kicking in Salem, which became a boomtown for female-owned herbalists and metaphysical businesses, LGBT-friendly goth fashion boutiques and witch-themed tours and museums, like the Salem Witch Museum, an informative if effigy-heavy recreation of the trials.

After my tour – and a pleasant hour of Christmas shopping for Black Moon Botanics hand-dipped black incense and Luna & Co magickal soaps at the goth Christmas fete at the Old Town Hall – I visit the Satanic Temple.

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Officially the headquarters of a “religious organisation”, the Satanic Temple is in reality an inviting art gallery and community base for organising inventive (and newsworthy) political protests against Christian fundamentalism and the unconstitutional fusing of church and state. I speak to curator Hannah Kathryn about the rising popularity of alternative December rituals such as Krampusnacht. The “Krampus is effectively a demonic creature that symbolises the onset of the dark nights and the struggles and dangers of surviving the cold Alps during the winter,” she says.

It’s about facing down fear; not pretending life is all lightness and brightness. “Today, Krampus acts as an anti-Santa, the yin to Saint Nicholas’s yang, as he expresses the countercultural contempt for the Coca-Cola-guzzling, bloated patriarch of all that is consumerist and parental.”

Socialists, too, don’t have it easy at Christmas. “At the Satanic Temple, we observe Sol Invictus on 25 December, a celebration of being unconquered by superstition, and being consistent in the pursuit and sharing of knowledge,” explains Hannah. In practice, what does this mean? “Charity is an important aspect of this season,” she says. “Giving back to your community in a way that aligns with your values is a key element of Sol Invictus.”

Suitably heartwarmed by modern-day political activist festivities, I attend a weirdly non-witchy event, the Historical Society’s Christmas In Salem House Tours. Architecture and history buffs have travelled from Tucson, Melbourne and Madrid to tour historical homes on Essex and Federal Street.

I ask the president, Richard Lindeman, how local historians feel about Salem being famous for witches. He smiles. “Listen, Halloween in Salem is great for the economy of the town, but there is much more to Salem’s history than the witch trials,” he says. “It’s important to remember that there were no witches; there were 25 innocent people who were persecuted and lost their lives.

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“It was a travesty and a tragedy, and it’s part of our history. But Salem is also one of the most architecturally significant cities in North America, and the maritime and abolitionist history is fascinating.” He adds that living on Federal Street, he “barely went outside” during October, when the streets are haunted by hundreds of thousands of Halloween tourists.

Like Mardi Gras in New Orleans or St Patrick’s Day in Dublin, Halloween in Salem is now a wishlist seasonal tourist experience, with hotels booked up more than a year in advance. This year more than a million tourists descended upon Salem in October. They come to drink blood-themed cocktails, partake in Airbnb-tour seances, have tarot readings and take graveyard selfies for Instagram. On any given day in October, some 100,000 visitors hit the streets of this town of 420,000. Even for a worldly trading port city such as Salem, this is a lot of sexy witches to deal with.

To my mind, Christmas in Salem is a far superior experience, more authentically weird, if weirdness is something that can ever be authenticated. In December, it certainly feels like Salem’s nonconformist, culturally alternative, socially tolerant, politically heretic spirit isn’t on show for tourists; it’s about the people who live here, whether you were born in Massachusetts or moved to Salem seeking your safe haven, your customers, your coven. In Salem, nobody is a weirdo because everyone is. This is the Witch City’s greatest magick trick.