Yes, in Gävle, Sweden, you can buy a Yule Goat and some matches at the same time. I personally think this is them leaning into the widely known fact that their big Yule Goat keeps getting burned down (and other methods of destruction but arson is far and away the most common).
Tag: gavle goat
Preparing for Yule Goat Watch
The Gavle Goat is set to go up soon!
I’ve discussed this poor, beleaguered monument a few times. Some years it survives, but more often than not (about 73%, actually), it goes down. Mostly in flames, although historically it has been run over, collapsed, stolen, or smashed, and last year’s goat was famously picked over by hungry jackdaws, due to the seed-heavy straw used. I don’t have enough data but I have heard a theory that the goat is supposed to be destroyed by some means or another, as a sacrifice to the old gods. (To this point, it survived in 2019, and we all know how the next year went. But then, it was also slowly damaged last year and look how this year went. So who’s to say?)
In related news, I have been spending the year on and off crocheting a little cousin to the big Gavle Goat (pattern here). The gauge is very tight so I have been forced to take breaks, but he is almost done! I expect to be finished in time for Christmas.
For once it’s not arson!
I’m astounded, frankly.
https://www.thelocal.se/20231214/swedens-gavle-goat-is-christmas-dinner-for-peckish-birds
Once Again…
‘Tis the season to keep track of the Gavle Goat. It was erected about a week ago and is currently still standing, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it and on other forms of Yuletide Vandalism.
Tangentially related, I’ve observed that some of my cohorts are, like me, kind of over all of the, well, stuff attached to Christmas as a celebration. Like, we still like it, and I especially still like the vibes, the inherent risk of winter even as the climate changes all around us, but Christmas trees are so hard to maintain and the lights are a literal workout to put up and then there’s buying gifts for everyone you know and all of that combined is simply exhausting. At least, that’s what I’ve found for myself.
Maybe this is the new vector of the War on Christmas (c). Just… being less consumerist about it. (In fact, Our Changing Climate did make that argument.) Maybe what we, as humans, need is to recognize the true spirit of the season. I’m not saying that to make an argument for Christianity (the gods know). What I mean is: the haunted nature, the long nights, the Wild Hunt, the return of the dead, just for a little bit.
Enjoy the dark, and tell ghost stories to each other. Or find some online. Here’s some:
That should get you started.
A little late…
The Gavle Goat survived the 2022 holiday season.
Samhain 2021
I discovered on 10-27 that the Gavle Goat, a perennial favorite target of Yuletide vandals, has survived 2020, as I had predicted. (I have been researching and preparing mentally for Yule 2021, for which I have big plans I may discuss at a later point.) Now I wonder if the Goat will survive Yule 2021, after four consecutive years of survival, or if the impulse will overtake someone and they will set fire to the straw figure once more (or at least, make an attempt).
I bring this up primarily as an update to a previous post, and a prediction for the future (in a sense). But I’m also doing it because in my mind, it is only the beginning of the most haunted, spiritually active time of the year. Last year I felt it to some degree or another until around May 1, but it peaked in December and January. The spirits will be out and about for a while, and I think many of the oldest ones are a bit slow to change with the human calendar. (In The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas, Ridenour postulates that some customs were shifted around in accordance with various factors, from the Catholic liturgical calendar to the state visits of important people. Generally, he suspects, some things moved “up” or earlier in time from older observances. This dovetails neatly with the theory that older wassailing traditions (and drunken carousing) have influenced Halloween trick-or-treating (and drunken carousing), and Christmas spirits and ghost stories being mostly abandoned in America in favor of Halloween spirits and ghost stories. Though that one is in part due to the Puritans banning Christmas altogether because it was too Pagan and too fun.)
That coupled with the general ramping up of spiritual and Otherworldly activity that everyone and their dog has noticed by this point, means I think we’re going to be seeing quite a haunted yuletide (see also When Divination Hands It To You).
I recognize there are a lot of mundane reasons that drive someone to vandalism of Christmas or other property: boredom, drunkenness, doing it because they can, seeing if they can get away with it, any combination thereof. But, I have been nurturing a theory that something else is also stirring this on, encouraging it. A potential candidate? Of course, I can’t be 100% certain of these things, especially these things, and I won’t say there’s one single answer to everything all the time, but I think there’s something here worth looking into.
Chràbhaidh a Andred 