Here is Frau Perchta the Belly-Slitter, the Baba-Yaga-like goddess of the Bavarian and Austrian Alps, who rewards the busy and punishes the lazy (though she also punishes other transgressions).
The 5th of January required a pescatarian fast. If she found meat or sweets or fatty foods in your insides, she would eviscerate you.
If you forgot to keep your home clean (a clean home is a clean conscience and a pure heart), she would eviscerate you.
If you hadn't done your winter chores (spinning, knitting, your school homework), she would eviscerate you.
And always when she eviscerated a person, she tied their intestines into knots and filled the victim's empty belly cavity with straw or rubbish, then stitched them back up: the victim becomes a scarecrow or a ragdoll, but of flesh and blood. You are what you eat, and if you had eaten junk food, well, you become junk.
On the other hand, if you respect Frau Perchta (your Twelfth Night meal is pescatarian, you have done all your chores, all your home is squeaky clean, etc.) you may find gifts under the Christmas tree, and money in your shoes.
You just have to earn these rewards.
To those who obey her, Frau Perchta appears as a beautiful silver-haired young lady in white. To those who wrong her, she is a hideous old crone with messy gray hair and a sharp iron nose and iron teeth. Like the Baba Yaga, she can be a donor or a punisher depending on how you treat her.
Her entourage consists of the Masked Ones, both handsome gods and hideous devils, the former or the latter depending on whether you wronged her. And also of the chorus of wailing Heimchen (literally, crickets), the ghosts of the babies who have died unbaptized (like the mylingar in Scandinavian folklore).
Long story short, Frau Perchta personifies your karma.
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