Père Fouettard is a character who accompanies Saint Nicholas on his rounds during Saint Nicholas Day dispensing lumps of coal and/or beatings to naughty children while St. Nicholas gives gifts to the well behaved. He is known mainly in the far north and eastern regions of France, in the south of Belgium, and in French-speaking Switzerland, although similar characters exist all over Europe. This "Whipping Father" was said to bring a whip with him to spank all of the naughty children who misbehaved.
Origin
The most popular story about the origin of Le Père Fouettard was first told in the year 1150. An innkeeper captures three boys who appear to be wealthy and on their way to enroll in a religious boarding school. Along with his wife, he kills the children in order to rob them. One gruesome version tells that they drug the children, slit their throats, cut them into pieces, and stew them in a barrel. St. Nicholas discovers the crime and resurrects the children. After this, Le Père Fouettard repents and becomes St. Nicholas' partner. A slightly different version of this story claims that St. Nicholas forced Le Père Fouettard to become his assistant as a punishment for his crimes. Another story states that during the Siege of Metz in 1552, an effigy of king Charles V was burned and dragged through the city. Meanwhile, an association of tanners created a grotesque character armed with a whip and bound in chains who punished children. After Metz was liberated, the charred effigy of Charles V and the character created by the tanners somehow assimilated into what is now known as Le Père Fouettard. Events surrounding the city's liberation and the burning of the effigy coincided with the passage of St. Nicholas, hence Le Père Fouettard became his "bad cop" counterpart. In the 1930s, Le Père Fouettard appeared in the United States under the translated name Father Flog or Spanky. Although almost identical to the original French personification, Father Flog had nothing to do with Christmas and also had a female accomplice named Mother Flog. The two doled out specific punishments for specific childhood crimes.
Appearance
The most common depiction of Le Père Fouettard is of a man with a sinister face dressed in dark robes with scraggly unkempt hair and a long beard. He is armed with a whip, a large stick, or bundles of switches. Some incarnations of the character have him wearing a wicker backpack in which children can be placed and carried away. Sometimes he merely carries a large bundle of sticks on his back. In the last hundred years his appearance has changed from burly bearded to one of blackface. Although traditional portrayals clearly show a white old man in a black robe, communities have seen a rise in grown men donning blackface, claiming that it is just dirt. In these more recent representations, Le Père Fouettard are identical to the Dutch character Zwarte Piet. Groups have protested the racist representation of the character and asked for abolishment of the character. Early renderings of the character show him as being nearly identical to Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus, but wearing a black suit.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, a line of hand-blended perfume oils, created a limited-edition Yule scent in 2008 named Le Père Fouettard consisting of "Whip leather, coal dust, gaufrette, and black licorice."
