Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was an Incorrigible Brat who was very naughty all the time, and that included during the winter months, when most of the rest of us are being charitable and spreading goodwill and all that, or at least having the self-awareness to give a few dollars to the people with the buckets outside the grocery stores to try to make up for all the selfish shit we’ve pulled over the course of the year.
Not the Incorrigible Brat. He was too incorrigible.
So December 5 rolled around, as it tends to do, and there was the Incorrigible Brat, stripping needles off the Christmas tree and letting the very nice glass and ceramic ornaments fall to the floor, even though his parents shouted things like “Noooo!” and “Those have been in the family for generations!” and “They don’t make em like they used to!”
Their cries fell on deaf ears.
Papa Incorrigible even tried to put his foot down. “You stop that, Brat!” he said, and he took up a candy cane that had fallen from the tree and smacked it at the Incorrigible Brat’s bottom.
Of course, the candy cane snapped in half because it was made of sugar, and the Brat just laughed it off.
“Oh, no,” he giggled. “Not the candy cane!”
And then Papa threw up his hands, and he and Mama declared, “We are at our wits’ end! Whatever shall we do?” And they went up to their room and settled in for a restless sleep, not even bothering to try to tell Brat to go to bed because we all know he wasn’t going to listen.
As Brat sat there, covered in pine needles and cackling with malevolent glee, there was a sudden BANG from the front hall, followed by the clop-clop of angrily stomping hooves.
“Bist du das Incorrigible Brat?” bellowed a goat-like voice.
“That’s me!” said the Brat.
In stormed a tremendous goat-demon. He carried a bundle of sticks in one clawed hand, and he wore a huge basket on his back. The Incorrigible Brat could hear the shrieks and wails of other children who had already been kidnapped.
“Ich bin Karmpus,” said Krampus, “und du musst dich besser benehmen.”
“What?” said the Brat.
Krampus scooped him up, snatched down his pajama pants, and laid into him with the birch bundle he carried.
“I thought you kidnapped children,” cried the Brat.
“Too good for you,” said Krampus. “You had better behave yourself, ja?”
“If that’s English, I can’t understand it through your stupid accent,” said the Brat.
So Krampus whipped his bare bottom until it was red and stripey, just like the extremely ineffectual candy cane that still lay shattered on the floor. When he was done, Krampus turned on his cloven heel and stomped off, clip-clopping through the foyer and slamming shut the front door.
To his credit, the Incorrigible Brat did calm down just a little. He behaved himself for an entire day. The birch had really stung. His parents were flabbergasted.
But then, once he’d healed up, he went right back to being Incorrigible.
His parents were wrapping gifts for family members and stowing them under the now depressingly bare-branched tree. The Brat started unwrapping them and re-wrapping them in other paper. His parents could tell, of course, because the Brat was not very good at wrapping presents and just did an overall sloppy job. So they had to re-wrap all the gifts, and they were busy enough this season, and they were getting very frazzled.
This time, Papa tried whipping him with the discarded ribbons from one of the gifts. It kind of worked—the ribbon certainly held up better than the candy cane—but Papa would have had to braid them into something sturdier if he really wanted to impart a lesson, and poor Papa was too harried by his very incorrigible son to have any bandwidth left for arts and crafts.
It went on like this until Christmas Eve. The parents went to bed, weary and miserable. Their only consolation was that Santa Claus would be by in the night to deliver their hellion child a mountain of gifts, which would hopefully be enough to distract him from his interminable incorrigibleness for at least a couple of days. They were both in desperate need of sleep.
The Incorrigible Brat slept, too, visions of sugar plums dancing in his head, and visions of eating all the sugar plums himself and leaving none for anyone else.
He awoke with a start to another loud BANG, and the Incorrigible Brat sat bolt upright in bed, expecting another visit from Krampus.
This time, though, it was his own bedroom door that had been kicked down, and who should he see standing in the doorway but Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, himself.
“Ho, ho, ho,” rumbled Santa. “You have been very naughty boy.”
“I think you must be mistaking me for someone else,” said the Incorrigible Brat.
In response, Santa held out a scroll of paper, which he let unfurl. Up at the top, it read NAUGHTY, and right underneath, in big bold letters, underlined three times, Incorrigible Brat.
“This is you?” said Santa.
The Brat could hardly deny it, so instead, he deflected. “I already got spanked by Krampus,” he protested. “I’m good for the year now, right?”
“That was warning spanking,” said Santa. He advanced on the boy, who had the good grace to at least look a little nervous. “It was supposed to teach lesson.”
The boy crinkled his nose at the man’s accent. “Why do you talk funny?” he demanded.
“Da,” said Santa to himself. “I have right boy.”
Santa reached down to unbuckle his belt. The thing was long, black, and as wide as his mittened hand, and it sparkled red and green with certified one hundred percent Christmas Magic.
“Okay, okay, I learned my lesson,” said the boy. He pushed himself back on his bed, as if he could escape through the headboard. “I’m sorry or whatever. You can go leave me my presents, now.”
“Oho,” said Santa. “I have present for you.”
The Brat hollered and tried to scramble away, but Santa grabbed him by the arm, planted one boot on the bed, and flipped the boy over his knee.
The belt hurt more than any spanking the Brat had received to date. He shrieked at the first blow, flailing his arms and legs, and cried, “That hurts! Put me down, you big fat bully!”
“I am bully!” laughed Santa, cracking the belt down again. “I am thinking this boy needs—what is word—perspective.”
“I have perspective!” gasped the boy, as Santa’s belt continued to roast his backside. “I can see the floor and your big stupid boots and—OW! Let me go!”
Santa did not let him go. In fact, he continued to whale on him, ignoring the pleas and the shouts and the sobs. His belt continued to snap off the insolent bottom, and with every fiery lick, another crackle of Christmas Magic embedded itself in the seat of the increasingly repentant boy’s pants.
“You are feeling sorry?” said Santa.
“Yes!”
“You will leave parents alone?”
“Yes, yes!”
“You will be picture of obedience, perfect angel of child, for entire rest of year?”
“I’ll never be naughty again!” gasped the Incorrigible Brat. “Oh, it hurts, it hurts! I’m sorry! Please let me go!”
When he was quite sure he’d made his point, Santa lowered the belt, and he rolled the boy off his knee and onto the mattress.
“Boy had better not be naughty,” said Santa, pointing a gloved finger at the Brat. “If he is, he feels Santa’s belt. Da?”
“Da,” gasped the boy.
“Good,” said Santa. “Merry Christmas.”
And laying a finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, Santa left the room, headed downstairs, and presumably, up the chimney he rose.
Christmas morning was a subdued affair. Mama and Papa traded gifts—and even though Santa had left jack squat for the Incorrigible Brat, his parents were good people, after all, and they had each gotten him a little gift of their own. The Brat was even feeling charitable enough to appreciate the gifts he got.
For the rest of the year, whenever the Brat got it into his head to start acting incorrigible again, he felt a crackle of Christmas Magic across his posterior. Once, when he failed to heed the warning and dug his hand right into the birthday cake his long-suffering parents had lovingly baked for his birthday party, he felt a mighty CRACK, and he whirled around, expecting to see the jolly old man standing behind him.
Of course, he wasn’t there. That was the magic of Santa’s belt, the Brat supposed morosely. It stuck with you.
And so, the Incorrigible Brat started to behave himself, to his parents’ great relief. And any time his bratty nature started to rear its head, the Christmas Magic was there to snap him back in line.
And everyone around him enjoyed peace on earth, spread goodwill toward men, and endured the company of a Brat who was still a Brat… but who was just a little bit more corrigible.