Krampus
In anticipation of St. Nicholas's visit on the evening of December 5th (before his feast day on the 6th) children leave their shoes on the windowsill or outside their bedroom door. St. Nicholas rewards the children who have been good all year by filling up their shoes with goodies, such as nuts, fruits and sweets..
However the kindly old Saint leaves the task of punishing bad children to a hell-bound counterpart known by many names across the continent but in Austria he's known as Krampus.
From the afternoon of the 5th through the entire night and most of the 6th the Krampus will rampage through Lofer. Wearing horrifingly demonic carved masks and animal skin costumes with bells and chains you can hear their terrible approach as they clank through the darkness. They also carry long sticks and whips. The chains are thought to be related to the idea of the creatures being bound to their place in the underworld, while the sacks that they carry are to take very bad children away with them. There is a procession of the Krampus and St Nicholas through Lofer in the evening - be warned the Krampus are very aggressive and delight in terrifying the crowd and do tend to use their whips liberally.
Part of the tradition, which is taken very seriously, is that the Krampus are active throughout the night and you should seriously avoid them if you are out and about later on as you will definately be picked on.
In some towns it has become necessary to make the Krampus wear numbers so that the overly reckless ones can be identified and disciplined.
The costumes they wear have often been handed down through the generations and many are both very valuable and truly terrifying.
This Krampus celebration originates back tens of thousands of years to the European practice of mummery during the winter solstice season when villagers across Europe dressed up as animals, wild-men and mythic figures to parade and perform humorous plays. This ancient tradition continues to this day as the primary source for our modern Halloween with its costumes, trick-or-treat, and pagan symbolism. Among the most common figures in these folk rituals were Old Man Winter and the horned Goat-Man — now found in the forms of Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus, and the Devil/Old Nick or the Austrian Krampus.