Swedish Christmas Goat Tradition

Modern representations of the yule goat are typically made of straw.

Swedish christmas goat tradition. A tradition developed of making goats out of straw bound with red ribbons. A typical swedish christmas tree has decorations such as baubles strings of lights and tinsel but also quite often straw figures and small swedish flags. Those traditions became part of christmas celebrations in places like sweden. The yule goat is a scandinavian and northern european yule and christmas symbol and tradition.

Because of how many of christmas s early pagan traditions stem from scandinavia people from sweden and norway maintain a lot of viking style yuletide traditions. ˈjɛ ːvlɛbɔkːɛn is a traditional christmas display erected annually at slottstorget castle square in central gävle sweden it is a giant version of a traditional swedish yule goat figure made of straw it is erected each year by local community groups at the beginning of advent over a period of two days. According to the guinness book of world records at 49 feet tall to the upper curve of its horns the 1993 version of the gävle goat holds the record for the world s largest. Swedes celebrate christmas on december 24th.

Yule goat gävlebocken in gävle sweden. It s an annual christmas tradition based on norse legends and worship of thunder god thor. The christmas goat is one of the very oldest christmas symbols in sweden and is often placed near the christmas tree. Made of straw the goat comes from the yule goat a typical scandinavian and northern european symbol of yule an historical winter festival observed by germanic people and christmas.

Giant straw goats up to 17 meters tall are being erected all over those countries every december. The idea of putting a full sized goat in the middle of the square has to be ascribed to stig gavlén in 1966. Its origin may be germanic pagan and has existed in many variants during scandinavian history. In sweden people thought of the yule goat as an invisible spirit that would appear some time before christmas to make sure that the yule preparations were being made correctly.

The gävle goat swedish. One of those traditions was the yule goat. The tradition of yule goat burning in sweden. One of these is the yule goat.

In the morning we would wake up and bake traditional pepparkakor gingersnap cookies and kanelbullar also called bulla together. The making of one goat requires 3 4 tons of straw.