Lutzelfrau

What it is

Lutzelfrau is a witch of German-speaking Alpine folklore, a figure children are told about around Saint Lucy's Day. In her mild form she brings fruit: apples, nuts and dried plums. In her severe form, called the dark Lucia in Bavaria and beyond, she is said to punish children who misbehave. She belongs to the same winter season as Perchta and Krampus, and her name is the usual general term for the tradition across Alpine Austria and Bavaria. Local versions carry many other names, from Burgenland to Sweden, and some of them involve costumed visitors rather than a witch known only from stories.

Where it comes from

The figure is tied to Sankt Lucia, Saint Lucy of Syracuse, whose name means 'luminous'. The local historian Gustav Gugitz suggested that the companion name Pudelfrau might be a worn-down form of Lutzelfrau; another reading links it to Hereinpudeln, the rolling or tossing of nuts and apples through a gap in a doorway. One common account holds that the Church put Lutzel in the place of the pagan Perchta, making Saint Lucy's Day a Christian reshaping of Perchta customs in German-speaking lands. For Lutheran Sweden a different account is offered: with saint veneration discouraged after the Reformation, the Christkind took over from Saint Nicholas, and the Lucie and Lussi custom is conjectured to have travelled from northern Germany into western Sweden.

How it is done

Customs differ from place to place. In Burgenland a Lutzelfrau or Pudlfrau is said to come to the door on the saint's day and toss sweets inside. In Burgenland and Lower Austria households once burned a mixture in an iron censer and recited a set prayer, repeating it at bedtime and tracing a cross on the floor with the left foot. Girls went to a willow by a stream between midnight and one o'clock, cut a sign into the bark and bound it back in place. Elsewhere the custom is a visiting performance: costumed figures enter homes, sweep the walls with goose feathers, ask after spinning work, and hand out fruit or sweets.

Tools and materials

The protective mixture combined charcoal left from the Easter Sunday fire, called Judenkohle, with frankincense and wood from a blackthorn bush, burned in an iron censer. The willow sign was cut with a Schnizer, a knife, into bark on the sunny side of a tree; the mark, the Luzienkreuz, was read on New Year's Day. Costumed visitors carried goose feathers for sweeping, brooms, brushes, a bucket of water and ladles. Some carried a sack and a broom as instruments of punishment; in the Ore Mountains the Luzi figure is said to have carried a spoon of wood, a needle and the hide of a hedgehog.

What it is for

The customs work on two fronts. One is protection: the censer rite and the bedtime cross are meant to keep the witch's spells and curses away from the household, and sweeping with feathers is described as sweeping misfortune out. The other is moral instruction: children are rewarded with fruit for good behaviour, and the dark form is a threat to those who misbehave. Spinning rooms had rules of their own. Girls also sought knowledge of what was coming by cutting a mark into willow bark and reading it after New Year.

Who does it

Those who carry the customs are mostly ordinary households and the people they hire. In Sweden the Lucia role went to maidservants in families rich enough to employ them, and a girl in white woke the household with a song. In Czech and Slovak areas the visitors were girls, youths and men in costume, sometimes in pairs: a white-clad girl with a candle and a soot-faced boy, or one figure in white and one in a Krampus-like costume. In Moravia a woman played Luca, and at Hrozenkov three men went from house to house with water, broom and brush.

Peoples and places

Austria's Burgenland and Lower Austria hold the core of the dark Lucia lore, in a band running through central and southern Burgenland, eastern Styria and a small district of Lower Austria. Bavaria shares the general name. Czechia has Lucie or Louce, and a masked Lutzl around Kašperské Hory; Slovakia has Lucka; Slovenia and Croatia know a dark Luz set against the Christian saint, called Lucija in Slovene. German communities in Czech and Slovak mining towns kept versions of their own. Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland have the white-clad Lucia, and Swedish Americans brought it to the United States.

What people believe

Behind the customs sits a winter world of judging figures. Besides Lucy herself, the tradition sets Lutzelfrau beside Perchta and Frau Holle, who watch over spinning rooms, and beside the Yule goat, which is offered as a link to goat-form costumes from Bohemia, Tyrol, Västergötland, Värend and Forsand in Rogaland. The dark and light sides belong to one being: the same figure who brings fruit is said to be capable of drowning or disembowelling a disobedient child. Rules about work and rest, especially spinning on the saint's day, carry their own penalties in these stories.

When it is done

The main date is 13 December, Saint Lucy's Day, which fell on the winter solstice under Sweden's old calendar and stayed on the thirteenth after the Gregorian change of 1753 moved the solstice to about 22 December. The willow visit falls between midnight and one o'clock that night, and the bark mark is read on New Year's Day. Swedish households woke at three or four in the morning for a feast, coming after a Lusse coffee tray and saffron buns later called Lusse-katter. The Ore Mountains figure belonged to the pre-Christmas season.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Gustav Gugitz, a local historian, proposed the Pudelfrau name as a possible corruption of Lutzelfrau and also noted a simpler reading, that it describes gifts rolled in through a doorway gap. The two standard origin accounts are both conjectural: a Church substitution of Perchta in German-speaking areas, and, for Sweden, a Lutheran transfer in which the Christkind replaced Saint Nicholas and the custom is guessed to have moved from northern Germany to western Sweden. Documentary dates are firmer: a Swedish celebration is recorded in 1655, a Lucia enactment in Västergötland in 1764, and the modern image in an 1848 painting by Fritz von Dardel.

Compare and confuse

Lutzelfrau stands near a cluster of winter figures: Perchta and Frau Holle, who police spinning; Krampus, the Alpine companion of Saint Nicholas; the Yule goat; and the Drude, a nightmare being invoked in the same prayer, whose cross is compared with the Luzienkreuz. The same visitor appears as Lucka in Slovakia, Lucie or Louce in Czechia, Lucija in Slovene, and Lucia, Lusse or Lussi in Sweden. A Japanese late-night cursing rite, Ushi no toki mairi, is noted for a crown of burning candles resembling hers.

Today

The Swedish celebration went out of fashion in some households around the early twentieth century. A newspaper contest for a Miss Lucia in Stockholm, begun in 1927, is credited with giving it new life. From Sweden the custom spread to Denmark and Finland after the Second World War, and Swedish Americans keep it in the United States. Costumed visiting survives in several Central European places, and the Swedish version is widely staged with a white gown, a candle crown, lingonberry leaves and a red sash.

Days linked to Lutzelfrau

Questions people ask about Lutzelfrau

Good reading and sources

• Lutzelfrau on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data