They started playing Christmas songs on the radio yesterday here. One of the first I heard was the inane "Dominic the Donkey" who I volunteer for setting on fire.

Link (new window)

Don't think they ever did the like in Finland. Or at least if "they" ever did, story was left out of my childhood education. Saved tale/tail, gonna fwd to my kinfolk.

I love the smell of burning goat, on Christmas Morning

Tnx much for link to traditions, Real Women. So my childhood education was deficient after all --

Rufus Lee King: This sort of stuff never turns out well.

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Further proof that God prefers a good ole' bbq.

Real Women Drink Akvavit: The tradition's origins (new window)

Blew my little California born mind when my Nordic grandparents told us about the Yule Goat. The Yule Cat is pretty scary as well. It eats lazy people.

Did they mentioned anything about feasting, drinking, bathing (the Norse did take showers, and also combed their hair. Often) and pillaging the neighbors?.

A little Scandinavian Christmas wish Link (new window)

Bah, didn't like my link. Let's try again. Link (new window)

MarshWoman: Thanks for that rockymom! Humon's comics are the greatest.

My pleasure MarshWoman, though credit for that has to go to my boyfriend. He saw me reading this thread and told me he had the perfect comic for it. The longer I live here in Sweden, the more Humon strikes me as acurate.

While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas story remains relatively simple. Santa lives with his wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If you're bad, he leaves you coal. If you're good and live in America, he'll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their great bounty.

A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before you go to bed. The former bishop from Turkey will be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared."

This is the reward for living in Holland. As a child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat it. As an added bonus, the government has thrown in legalized drugs and prostitution--so what's not to love about being Dutch?

Oscar finished his story just as we arrived at the station. He was a polite and interesting guy--very good company--but when he offered to wait until my train arrived, I begged off, saying I had some calls to make. Sitting alone in the vast terminal, surrounded by other polite, seemingly interesting Dutch people, I couldn't help but feel second-rate. Yes, it was a small country, but it had six to eight black men and a really good bedtime story.

Being a fairly competitive person, I felt jealous, then bitter, and was edging toward hostile when I remembered the blind hunter tramping off into the Michigan forest. He might bag a deer, or he might happily shoot his sighted companion in the stomach. He may find his way back to the car, or he may wander around for a week or two before stumbling through your front door. We don't know for sure, but in pinning that license to his chest, he inspires the sort of narrative that ultimately makes me proud to be an American.

Real Women Drink Akvavit: If climbing on the fence to pilfer pears from the neighbor's tree and figs from another neighbor's tree counts as pillaging, I do it all the time. Gran does NOT approve. However, she is the one who taught us to be so fussy about personal appearance and I have noticed that many Nordic people are very vain, so I figured it was cultural and probably went back a long way. I'm a Cali girl though, so I probably would have learned all that personal vanity anyway.

:D Nice.

/Haven't eaten a good fig in a while, though

rockymom: Bah, didn't like my link. Let's try again. Link (new window)
Kiitos from me too, rockymom. Or maybe it's tack?