While good little boys and girls in America are preparing for St. Nick's Dec. 25 flyby, children in Austria are probably running for their lives because of Santa's not-so-jolly Christmas companion.

Austrians have spoken: some of the country’s most visited Christmas markets aren’t the ones you’d expect. Here’s where locals are heading this year.

Monstrous: actors for St Nicholas and the Krampus in Austria - iStockphoto “Christmas teems with monsters,” Sarah Clegg writes in The Dead of Winter, her history of lesser-known wintry traditions.

Christmas is one of the most globally celebrated holidays in the world. But not everybody celebrates the same way—or even on the same day. While Christmas is, at its core, a Christian holiday ...