A giant straw goat – the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol – erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again.
The 13-metre (43-ft) high billy goat has been torched 24 times since it was first erected in Gavle in 1966.
That pretty much works out to once every other year, and while I understand that the people of Gavle may be a bit upset that they’ve been signed up for the involuntary Christmas tradition of Burning Down The Swedish Goat I’m not sure that they can fight the rest of the country. Or, apparently, the clandestine American Burning Down The Swedish Goat tourism industry (apparently, they caught an American doing it one year). Maybe they can pretend it was all their idea, all along? Might be worth some extra cash, especially if they make it into a contest…