The Icelandic Christmas Cat or Yule Cat is a not a very nice cat. He eats kids and farm workers given a chance. His Icelandic name is Jólakötturinn or Jólaköttur. I have no idea how to pronounce that. Jólakötturinn eats kids who don’t have at least one new item of clothing to wear before Christmas Eve. That is what Icelandic parents, in some homes, tell their children. They say that Jólakötturinn can tell who the lazy children are because they don’t have at least one new item of clothing. If that were to be the case the child would be sacrificed to the Yule Cat.
The Yule Cat is a huge and nasty cat from Icelandic folklore. The threat of being eaten by this massive monster of a cat was not only used to motivate kids. Apparently farmers threatened their employees with being preyed upon by the Yule Cat in order to encourage them to complete the processing of the autumn wool before Christmas. The workers who worked got new clothes otherwise there would be no new clothes plus they would be preyed upon by this mythical cat.
What do you think about that? It is certainly completely new to me. It all sounds a bit nasty except for the fact that I expect it was all in good fun. I would have thought that what really happened was that the kids got better presents and the workers received a gift of some sort (a bonus) if they behaved well. I am guessing but that would seem to be the idea.
My thanks to Robyn Jensen aka Riverside Robyn for finding this information for me.
Ridiculous and nasty, these types of folklores. I never heard of this one either.
And we have the nerve to wonder how some kids and people could fear or hate cats?
Really. How necessary and cruel.
I don’t think making the cat an ogre is a fun thing it’s just one more way for cat haters to put them in a bad light.
Communal repression of naughty children. There is of course coal in the stocking here in the US (and abroad I assume?). Another one of these is the Krampus. From Wikipedia.org:
“Krampus is a beast-like creature from the folklore of Alpine countries thought to punish children during the Yule season who had misbehaved, in contrast with Saint Nicholas, who rewards well-behaved ones with gifts. Krampus is said to capture particularly naughty children in his sack and carry them away to his lair.”
Krampus was recently featured on American Dad, an American cartoon for grownups. I wish they would of done the Yule Cat. I think I’ll use the Yule Cat on the kids this year.
Thanks! This was very interesting read. I think we should all share it on Google+, Facebook, etc.
Dan
It’s not really funny demonising cats, they have bad enough press already 🙁
That cat looks pretty cute for an evil cat.
Can’t say I’ve ever heard of this before!
Nor me. Riverside Robyn pointed it out to me. It is just another example of making the cat an ogre. But it is a fun thing.