Christmas’ most endangered species: The Gävle goat

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

It’s the most goating time of the year in Scandinavia.

All cultures have their quirky Christmas traditions — especially in Europe — from Catalonian poopers to the Alpine Krampus, so it’s no surprise that some Nordic countries build Yule goat figures to celebrate the holidays.

After all, nothing screams Christmas like the image of a screaming goat.

The historical roots of the hollow-horned mammal’s myth are unclear, but many think it originated from German paganism or Norse traditions and has been associated with the god Thor — could he have built the first one with his hammer? We will never truly know.

The goat has eventually morphed into a magical creature responsible for bringing presents to all kids on Christmas day (who needs a Rudolph when you can have a Billy the Kid?).

More recently, it has become a must-have ornament on Scandinavian Christmas trees. A shabby chic touch on the green pointy thing we all buy this time of year, that is either plastic or real; the latter losing thousands of smaller pointy things on our floors from the day we shove it into our homes, which we then have to clean up roughly twice a day for the following three to four weeks. You know, the holiday spirit.

And that’s when a Swedish town decided to take its decorative skills to the next level.

The Gävle goat is a giant Yule goat statue (as high as 13 meters) made of straw. It gets its name from the town of Gävle, where it is erected every year on the first day of Advent (2024 even saw a live stream of the event) and is truly majestic.

So majestic in fact, that everyone wants a piece of it. The poor animal has had no peace since it was built for the first time in 1966: Of 58 goats, only 16 have made it intact to Christmas day. Some were beaten with clubs, shot with flaming arrows or run over; others were eaten by birds and one was targeted by two mysterious men who planned to kidnap it with a helicopter — they even tried to bribe Mats the security guard a whopping €4,300 (50,000 kronor) to do it. Thankfully, Nordic security guards have too much integrity — and better salaries — to be tempted by 50,000 kronor.

Seeing its history, the Gävle goat should be considered an endangered ornament species, and deserves protection. But whether enough has been done to allow this year’s specimen to make it to Dec. 25 remains to be seen.

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