Talk:Belsnickel

merge?

I think it would make sense to merge this with Companions of Saint Nicholas. Thoughts? --Allen 20:16, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I do not think such an action would be proper. There are many folks who believe that Belsnickel is a reflection not of St. Nicholas but of the much older Germanic god Wudan/Wodan/Wotan/Odin. Thanks! --Rob 22:22, 21 November 2012 (EST)

I agree with Verzannt: Krampus may be better suited for the combination, but Belsnickel encompasses both the good and bad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justin.w.schmidt (talk • contribs) 16:26, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

"Bensnickle"

Is "Bensnickle" (third para) a typo?

Squomb (talk) 20:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it. I've told of him under that name. I'm 99 percent sure "Bensnickle" is pronounced "bench-nickel". MalwareSmarts (talk) 21:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"Belsnickle Pronuncation

If you are "the English" you will never get it right and if you are Penn Dutch "Es nacht nix aus" (It dosen't matter!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.156.30.51 (talk) 15:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Etymology?

The root "-nickel" is unsourced for the current claim that it's a form of St Nicholas. Surely though this is more likely (and should at least be mentioned) to be from nickel, a German name for demons or more imps that also gave its name to the metal nickel, for its association with superstitious miners (German miners also named the poisonous ores of cobalt after the kobold). This gives the overall name as "Walloping demon", a much more self-consistent name than a brutal St Nicholas in fur! Andy Dingley (talk) 10:15, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Article 25nov12

An unusally source article at http://old.post-gazette.com/pg/12330/1279165-109.stm for editors interested. Rorybowman (talk) 17:17, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Congrats, editors! This article was just featured on The Office

A character just explicitly consulted the Wikipedia article on Belsnickel. Good work! I still can't believe WP is mainstream. --HectorMoffet (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Hoax?

Is this entry a Hoax by the office? I'm German and I live in the "Odenwald", well very close to it because it's mostly nature and hardly anyone lives "in" it. I've NEVER heard of anything like this guy that this article is about. There's also no equivalent german article on wikipedia. I just heard of it for the first time on the office and couldn't believe it. update: okay after some reading I think this guy here has nothing to do with germany at least. maybe it's from the netherlands - I don't really know what this Penn dutch community represents - dutch immigrants in pennsylvania? Well it's a different country ;) In german tradition we have "knecht ruprecht" who is like the bad cop while "nikolaus" is the good one. But we don't have anything even close to this belsnickel. especially not in the southwestern germany!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.216.117.244 (talk) 22:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC) 

So your hoax hypothesis would be that The Office writers created this Wikipedia article in 2006, six years before their episode mentioning Belsnickel aired. Does that seem plausible to you? ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Something to keep in mind is that The Office could have exaggerated the legend. Perhaps there is no "Impish or Admirable" game where you get whipped. Who knows? We'll need a citation for that. Now if the issue is whether or not there was a Belsnickel at all could use some further research (the timestamps at least say that there indeed is a Belsnickel) --68.123.155.239 (talk) 10:08, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

This is definitely not a hoax, because it's part of the Pennsylvania Dutch/Pennsylvania German tradition. On the German page that links from this page, it states that the name Pelzmärtel/Pelznickel appears in Franconia. It also says that the figure originated during the Reformation because Protestants wanted their own St. Nicholas/Santa Claus. Well, Franconia has a region called Upper Palatinate. The Protestants in the Upper Palatinate were expelled in the 1600s. The founder of Germantown, Philadelphia, was Francis Daniel Pastorius who was born in 1651, you guessed it, in Franconia. Repkow (talk) 20:06, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

A different version of "belsnickel"

I just came to this article because I was trying to Google was "bellsnickling" was. The person who mentioned it then explained that near Christmas, people would dress up in disguises. They would knock on neighbors doors and not speak. The people at the house had to let them in and play hostess to them, giving them food and drink until they could successfully guess the bellsnickler's identities. Then they would move on to the next house. Just thought I'd toss that out there, I don't know if it's an American messed-up-version of Belsnickeling, or if it was a very local thing. This particular reference might have been around the 50s (broad guess) and Virginia (of USA). 2601:A:5780:2EA:34A5:C806:FD55:DF4B (talk) 02:03, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Getting more information, another person said it was practiced in the Shenandoah Valley area, probably in the areas with a lot of German-ancestry. They're sure people did it in the 1910s and 1920s. They were not sure how long it continued into the 1940s and/or 1950s, if at all. 2601:A:5780:2EA:E573:CB2E:C391:F3BF (talk) 19:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)