The photo of the miniature Yule goat in my previous post inspired me to write more about it. The Yule goat is a common Christmas decoration in Finland and Sweden although its history is presumably pagan.
When my grandmother was a child at the beginning of the 20th century, the Yule goat became the giver of Christmas gifts. Often a man in the family dressed as the Yule goat wearing a grey coat - nothing as fancy as the Father Christmas today. In Finland we still call Father Christmas and Santa Claus 'Joulupukki' (the Yule Goat) and this straw figure we call the straw goat.
The straw goats come in many sizes but they are always made of straw and decorated with red ribbon. Some of them are placed under the Christmas tree or on a table, others hung on the Christmas tree. In the city of Gävle in Sweden they build a huge 13-meter straw goat every year.
If you want to know more about the Yule goat, here's a link to an interesting article about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment