The War On Christmas, Swedish Style

by hilzoy

Who could resist a headline like: "Vandals Burn Swedish Christmas Goat, Again"?

"Vandals set light to a giant straw goat Saturday night in a central Swedish town, police said -- an event that has happened so frequently it has almost become a Christmas tradition. It was the 22nd time that the goat had gone up in smoke since merchants in Gavle, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Stockholm, began erecting it to mark the holiday season.

Police spokeswoman Margareta Olander said officers received a call just after 9 p.m. to report that the goat was ablaze. "In just a couple of minutes only a sooty wooden skeleton remained," she said. There were no immediate suspects, but Olander said that one of two men seen running from the scene was wearing a Father Christmas mask.

Since 1966, just 10 of the 43-foot-high goats have survived beyond Christmas Day. Most were burned -- sometimes within hours of being built during the first week of December. The 1976 goat was hit by a car, while in 1997, it was damaged by fireworks."

That's my ancestral country for you! When Swedes declare a war on Christmas, they don't just ask cashiers to say 'Happy Holidays', or call 'Christmas trees' 'friendship trees'. (No doubt a name change that reflects extensive market research and focus-group testing, all paid for by the nefarious George Soros and his billions.) They don't even issue orders that "Department stores throughout the country are to utilize UN symbols and emblems as Christmas decorations" as "part of a much broader plan, not only to promote the UN, but to destroy all religious beliefs and customs."

No: in Sweden, they don't go in for such pathetic half-measures. When they declare war on Christmas, they burn down the Christmas goat! Repeatedly! Except for the years they decide to run it over with a car, or blow it up! Now that's what I call secularists gone wild.

Unless, of course, this is the work of Christians who think that the Christmas goat might be a pagan idol.

Consider this an open thread.

Comments

[Jay C]

Maybe, hilzoy, the suspiciously annual Swedish Christmas Goat Conflagration isn't"... the work of Christians who think that the Christmas goat might be a pagan idol." Maybe it is actually the work of pagans; who have cleverly worked their traditional December straw-goat-burning ritual into today's repertoire of "holiday" customs?
After all, other than being celebrated around the date more-or-less-arbitrarily tagged as Jesus' birthday, it's well-known that many (if not most) "Christmas" customs and rituals are merely barbarian flummery (most of which derive from the Great Cold North anyway) dressed up with vaguely Christian references.
Maybe the Gavle Goatburners have just been smarter than the average pagan in gettin g their idolatry out in the open (I'd guess the arrest rate for this vandalism is suspiciously low). Inquiring minds want to know!
And for the rest of you, Seasons' Greetings! :)

[lily]

Good morning! Or whatever time of day it is wherever you are! My boyfriend and I are going Christmas shopping today, followed by a tree acquisition expedition, our contribution to the W on C. Not bad for an atheist and a Buddhist. I love Christmas. I love everything about it, except shopping malls, which aren't a required part of the experience. This year we are asking everyone who feels inclined to give us presents to make donations to a good cause instead, so I already know what Paul is giving me: a water buffalo for Heifer International.

[trilobite]

Have we controlled for the possibility of a grudge against goats? We need to get the same merchants' group to erect an equally large goat in the same place at some other time(s) of year and see what happens.

[lily]

My dad was always threatening to burn virgins for the Winter Solstice, but he was a college professor and didn't know any.

[Gary Farber]

Stop trying to get my goat! Just stop!

Okay, I admit that it's a wooly subject.

What was this thread about, again?

[Jesurgislac]

Perhaps they're rogue telephone sanitisers who believe this to be the giant star-goat come to eat up the world.

[Anarch]

My dad was always threatening to burn virgins for the Winter Solstice, but he was a college professor and didn't know any.

Didn't teach math, huh?

[Tim]

What, is Thor's sleigh pulled by goats in Sweden?

[hilzoy]

Tim: Thor doesn't have a sleigh. Sleighs are for wimps. His trusty hammer, Mjolnir, is all he needs.

I'm also jealous of countries where random police spokespersons in minor towns can speak another language well enough to say things like: "In just a couple of minutes only a sooty wooden skeleton remained."

[John Thullen]

Perhaps the vandals believe they are dealing with a Trojan Goat, which would be a horse of a different color in sheep's clothing.

Clearly, the Swedish town in question should solve this dilemma by erecting two straw goats, one for worshiping and one for burning.

After all, that's how God solved Abraham's problem with the sacrifice of Isaac, the well-known child martyr. He said, hey Abe, if you think about this, there is a way out, and then God stage-coughed and Abraham thought he said "lamb kebobs".

So, two summers ago, we're driving up the eastern coast of Sweden and we stop at a convenience store and while my wife is at the counter paying for sandwiches my then 14-year old son and I are gazing at the candy bars and we notice the funny names. Like "Pigall", and "Dumle" and our favorite with a creamy nougat center: "Plop"

For candy bars. The two of us went into hysterical adolescent giggling (I had driven non-stop for 12 hours from Hamburg) in the store, into the parking lot, and we couldn't look at each other for the next two days without his milk and my beer projectiling out of our respective nostrils.

[John Thullen]

I certainly hope no one takes my comment about the candy bars as evidence that I hate Sweden, though I can understand why giggling disrespecfully about Swedish candy bars is quacking and talking like a very clever duck.

I love Sweden nearly as much as I love America, in fact my love for Sweden is way ahead of my love for our Iraq policies.

[donna]

Yeah, but when WE get the perpetual victims of victims to declare a war against the war on Cristmas we get conspiracy theories about the secret illuminati cabal destroying all our rights and enslaving us to the athiestic, liberal, baby kiling MSM judical tyranny, which in certain quarters undoubted is parsed into ZOG.

O'Reilly and others do not note that one can simply tell retailers that you are more likely to buy if they include Christmas among the Holdiays, that even publicly financed nativiy scenes are allowed even on public land if they also include secular symbols...

Because we are oppressed! The dastardly Illuminati is warring against Christianity, we suffer far more than the victims of communism and we must tell everyone with any semblance of holiday cheer about if for hours and hours and hours!

[dutchmarbel]

In the Netherlands the WoC is actually fought by some Christian fundamentalists :), who believe that the pagan roots of the celebration taint it.

In the strict-reformed regions you will not see a christmas tree either :), nor will they celebrate saint Nicholas (forefather of santa claus) because he is a catholic bishop.

[Phillip J. Birmingham]

What, is Thor's sleigh pulled by goats in Sweden?

Believe it or not, Thor was supposed to have a chariot that was pulled by two goats.

(I was going to insert a Jack Kirby joke here, but decided not to.)

[John Thullen]

Open Thread.

"Bootontheneck" over at Redstate has a post up calling Murtha a traitor. He does point out in the comments, reluctantly, that this is not quite a prosecutable offense.

We have two countries now, folks. The other one is getting ready. What about this one?

So, I muse from time to time about the relative hospitality and hostility of this site as compared to Redstate, in Moe Lane's mind, I mean.

[liberal japonicus]

two summers ago, we're driving up...

A road trip with John Thullen, that is what I want for Christmas. And frankly, it's what I need after reading that diary at Redstate...

[John Thullen]

Further, but back to Christmas, Max Sawicky channels Hunter from DKOS in pointing out that FOX News, using O'Reilly and John Gibson as their mouthpieces, is really an anti-Semitic front.

You know, "Happy Holidays" is Yiddish for "the Jews (particularly the wealthy ones) killed Christ so whaddya think about that?"

All the evidence I've seen confirms to me that O'Reilly (not Gibson; he wears the pompadour and the diaper of a coward) is getting ready to set off car bombs. O'Reilly is not a coward but he does have the same sheen of fascistic perspiration on his upper lip that Goebbels did when the Fuhrer got serious about making the trains run on time.

Why are Jews not protected from these people by our government? I wish Soros would appear on O'Reilly's show and leave a briefcase under the table. After eviscerating him verbally. That would be two eviscerations in one show.

Merry Christmas.

[Katherine]

John, John, they have no problem with Jews. They just hate latte-sipping New-York-Times reading over-educated secular liberal elites who control international banking, Hollywood and the media and hate the baby Jesus.

[NeoDude]

Now this was WAR!!!:

The first century of colonial life saw few set times and days for pleasure. The holy days of the English Church were as a stench to the Puritan nostrils, and their public celebration was at once rigidly forbidden by the laws of New England. New holidays were not quickly evolved, and the sober gatherings for matters of Church and State for a time took their place. The hatred of "wanton Bacchanallian Christmasses" spent throughout England, as Cotton said, in "revelling, dicing, carding, masking, mumming, consumed in compotations, in interludes, in excess of wine, in mad mirth," was the natural reaction of intelligent and thoughtful minds against the excesses of a festival which had ceased to be a Christian holiday, but was dominated by a lord of misrule who did not hesitate to invade the churches in time of service, in his noisy revels and sports. English Churchmen long ago revolted also against such Christmas observance.

Of the first Pilgrim Christmas we know but little, save that it was spent, as was many a later one, in work.

By 1659 the Puritans had grown to hate Christmas more and more; it was, to use Shakespeare's words, "the bug that feared them all." The very name smacked to them of incense, stole, and monkish jargon; any person who observed it as a holiday by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way was to pay five shillings fine, so desirous were they to "beate down every sprout of Episcopacie." Judge Sewall watched jealously the feeling of the people with regard to Christmas, and noted with pleasure on each succeeding year the continuance of common traffic throughout the day. Such entries as this show his attitude: "Dec. 25, 1685. Carts come to town and shops open as usual. Some somehow observe the day, but are vexed I believe that the Body of people profane it, and blessed be God no authority yet to compel them to keep it."

From:
COLONIAL">http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/whx/bl_christmas_earle.htm">COLONIAL CHRISTMASES

[NeoDude]

I mean, you can ring the burning witches’ bell all you want, considering the Puritan’s era they were a drop in the fanatical Christian sea

All things considered, the Puritans were some radical and revolutionary folk. Just extraordinarily fasinating.

{Michael Walzer has done some great work, on this}

[alice]

Catherine some of them, did I stress some (but still a couple million) do have a problem with Jews. The same folks who helped brand McCain a North Viet agent were often on about ZOG a bit earlier.

"Hollywood" (California) "New York" "liberal" "media" etc. have been code words. There are dark places, very dark places.

The religious nuts support Israel because they feel it's necessary for Jesus to come back and kill everybody who hasn't flown up in the rapture slowly and painfully, but this doesn't mean that all of them believe that god actually hears a Jew pray.

The right had a point about "peace" activists who go to dems sponsored by ANSWER (all hail dear leader kim!) but this doesn't mean that they don't have a large significant cadre of nasty nuts of their own. With guns, who sometimes march with the militias.

O'Reilly is riding a nasty force.

This from a guy who spent the seventies doing disco and then according to people who knew him in the eighties went around telling everyone he wasn't gay (I don't make this up!) Old Falafel has got some serious "issues." And as the mainstream sours on him, there is a tendency to run with the nuts, further and further as he reveals the truth which some say will reveal the prophec of militia leader bill Cooper gunned down by police when he tried to kill them who was among the first to expose the grey alien/government/illuminati connections.

[jwo]

I have to laugh when people like O'Reilly get upset about what is posted in places like Walmart regarding Christmas. It used to be that Christians got upset about the commercialization of Christmas. Now he calls it the great "commercial holiday!" Too funny! It has as little to do with religion as the Fourth of July fireworks. It is all about making money, and I agree that it is the great "commercial holiday," but just have to wonder why O'Reilly is so bent out of shape about the signs that they use. Christ probably would have quickly cleared the "temple" that is Walmart! Again. Too, too funny.

[dr ngo]

As long as we're into seasonal Scandanavian animals, let's hear it for the Yule Cat

Since my wife's family name is Yule, this causes particular jollity around our house.

[Exult]

All I want to do is celebrate life and enjoy what little time left I have, exult in life's wonderful offerings and WITHOUT any religious underpinnings, thank you very much. No one has the right to desecrate other's objects of worship, but I applaud the secularists /pagans for any attempt to take back the winter soltice celebrations, originally their own, stolen by the christians and redefined in their own terms. Welcome Yule!

[Dr. BLT]

I'm sorry it took me one year to respond to this, but sometimes I prefer to think first, then respond.

I don't mean to get on the case of Best Buy, but I won't buy at Best Buy this Christmas. Instead, I'll say "Bye, bye!" and sing my new song, protesting their decision to ban Christmas greetings from their ad campaign:

Best Buy Inn
words and music by Dr. BLT (c) 2006
http://www.drblt.net/music/BestBI.mp3