Sunday, December 03, 2017

The Swedish Christmas Goat is back

The Swedish Christmas Goat is back

It's one of my favorite international holiday symbols, probably #2 after the Giant Pink Japanese Penis.

If you're not familiar with the Swedish tradition of caprine merriment, here's how it goes down: every Christmas season, for mystifying reasons known only to them, some important Swedish mucky-mucks erect the world's largest straw goat (official site), and every year various hooligans attempt to burn it down or to pull some other wacky, goat-oriented tomfoolery.

One year, some guys who apparently had watched too many movies tried to haul it off with a helicopter! I suppose those were not Swedish movies they watched, because then they would have simply stood near the goat, stared off into the middle distance, and made some hollow-sounding and cryptic remarks about how God was punishing Sweden for last year's goat-burning with this year's poor harvest.

In 2016, the Holy Goat was burned just hours after its debut, whereupon it was replaced by a smaller goat, which was in its turn run over by a car. (Details). Apparently Sweden is to fake goats as action movie black limos are to street bazaars.

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