Perchta- Germanic GodDeity

The Spinning and the Knife

All flax had to be spun by Christmas Eve. From that night through Epiphany, no wheel could turn. The Twelve Days belonged to Perchta.

On Perchtennacht, the eve of January 6, she walked from house to house. Her name comes from Old High German beraht, "bright" or "shining," but what she brought depended on what she found. A clean house, finished work, and an offering of fish and porridge earned silver coins. Unfinished flax or a dirty hearth earned worse. Perchta slit the offender's belly open, pulled out the organs, and stuffed the cavity with straw and pebbles. Then she sewed it shut.

The Bright One and the Hag

She had two faces. In some Alpine tellings she appeared as a woman in white, luminous as her name. In others she was a hag with a long nose, matted hair, and one oversized foot, flat and splayed like a goose's or a swan's. The foot marked her. No disguise could hide it.

She also led processions through the winter dark. Behind her walked the souls of unbaptized children and the year's dead. Burchard of Worms described nocturnal rides with her around 1010 CE, women who believed they joined her retinue through the sky.

The Perchten

Burchard condemned the belief. Two centuries later, the preacher Berthold of Regensburg warned his congregations against her by name. The Church tried to bury Perchta. It failed.

In Alpine Austria and Bavaria, masked figures called Perchten still walk during winter processions. They wear elaborate carved wooden masks: the Schönperchten, beautiful and welcoming, and the Schiachperchten, twisted and snarling. The beautiful ones invite the new year in. The terrifying ones drive the old year's evil out.