All posts by
Heather Griffiths

The human bond with animals pre-dates written history. So it’s not surprising that it didn’t take long after December 25th was fixed on as the date on which christians would celebrate Jesus’ birth, for stories to begin circulating which featured animals.

What is a little surprising is how often those stories feature animals plotting harm against humans, or even actively doing them harm. What’s the deal with that?

An evil giant Icelandic cat with glowing eyes, Jolakotturinn, visits your house on Christmas Eve to eat anyone who doesn’t have new clothes. Only a nation of maniacs responds with “Wow, that’s festive! Merry Christmas!!”

Folklorists generally seem to agree that this particular scary Christmas animal story is an incentive to people to work hard at shearing the sheep and finishing the spinning, weaving and knitting before Christmas. Perhaps this fable explains Icelanders’ famous work ethic. Instead of ‘visions of sugar plums’ dancing in their heads, little children are sent to bed on Christmas Eve with the prospect of a giant cat with glowing eyes coming to eat them in the night because they left that last hank of wool unspun.

I know I would develop a life long phobia about leaving any tasks undone. And cats. Cats with glowing eyes.

No way would I have a cat if I lived in Iceland. What if it was a little fifth columnist spy feeding information to Jolakotturinn about my sloth and me being generally unworthy of the gift of life?

Icelanders are also renowned for their saga poetry dating back a thousand years. In this tradition, in 1932 Johannes ur Kotlum published what is widely described as a “well-loved’ book of children’s verse, “Christmas is Coming – Verse for Children”. When I tell you that the grisly tale of Jolakotturrin is one of the more upbeat tales in the book, you will understand me when I say I’m not really getting the whole “well-loved’ thing, but hey, Icelanders also love Bjork.

Who, of course, being both Bjork and an Icelander, created a “well-loved” song from the legend of Jolakotturrin. If you want to send your children to bed screaming on Christmas Eve, let them listen to this toe tapper, and do read them the English lyrics as they follow along.

What’s harder to understand is how despite being raised on horrific threats like this – and at Christmas no less – Iceland still ranks as the world’s third happiest country.

Probably most people know that animals gain the gift of human speech between midnight and dawn on Christmas Eve.

The myth is certainly widespread in Europe and dovetails with the belief that Christ was born at the stroke of midnight.

What is perhaps less well known is that spying on what the animals have to say rarely ends well. “No one can hear the beasts talk with impunity…” seems to be a common theme.

There was, for example, the farmer’s servant who hid in the stable to overhear the beasts’ talk. He hoped they would disclose where treasure was buried (a common thread in this myth). He gets excited when midnight chimes, and the animals start a conversation.

A horse says, “We shall have hard work to do tomorrow.”

“Yes, the farmer’s servant is heavy,” replies another horse.

“And the way to the churchyard is long and steep,” says the first horse.

The servant is disappointed when the conversation then turns to praise of the Christ Child, and there is no mention of treasure.

That night, the servant dies. As they foresaw, those two horses have to work hard to pull the wagon carrying the servant’s body to the graveyard beside the church.

When eavesdroppers do hear the animals talking about where treasure is hidden, the treasure seeker usually dies in the attempt because they rushed away without hearing the whole story. It goes something like –

Horse: “How about that treasure trove of gold buried under the big monolithic stone over the next hill, huh?”

Eavesdropper rushes away to find a crowbar and a shovel, and therefore misses the response by the cow: “Yeah. Too bad anyone who digs there will be crushed by the toppling stone.”

Next morning, horses are dragging yet another body up the hill to that graveyard.

Christmas. Talking animals. A recipe for mayhem and slaughter.

There are of course, less disturbing stories involving animals at Christmas.

In the north of England, it is said that bees assemble on Christmas Eve and hum a Christmas hymn. Presumably, they hum “The Friendly Beasts”, which covers donkeys, cows and doves in default of bees. There is no carol featuring bees. Because, duh, bees be hibernating in the winter.

There is a charming legend that the letter “M” which can be seen on the forehead of every single tabby cat stands, for ‘Mary’. Jesus’ mother gave her mark to the tabby in thanks for a friendly striped moggy climbing into the manger to keep the baby warm. The other animals in the stable were too big to fit in the manger, and I’m guessing Mary was a little squeamish about putting her baby down into the muck on the stable floor to cuddle up to the sheep or ox. Good call.

Hey! Maybe I just figured out the origin of the saying that ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ – literally true in this case.

Of course, a cynic who knows cats, might say that it was at least equally likely that the cat was only climbing into the manger to keep herself warm. That’s certainly why our very first cat Justine (conveniently for the purposes of this story, a tabby) used to park herself in the crib with our very first child, Chris.

Mary was clearly a much kinder lady than me, as she chose to think the best of the cat invading her child’s bed. Or maybe she just hadn’t had much experience with cats.

It’s not Christmas related, but in the interests of ecumenicalism, I should mention that an alternative legend has the “M’ being in honour of Mohammed, who reportedly loved cats. He was said to have cut off the sleeve of his robe, rather than disturb his sleeping cat Muezza.

The use of nativity scenes at Christmas comes down to us from St. Francis of Assisi, who famously loved animals. He was slated to preach to the locals at Christmas time in a cave in Grecio, and got permission from Pope Honorious III to set up a manger and some animals there. He obviously felt that visual aids would add pizzazz to his retelling of the Christmas story. A clever use of stagecraft. Given that most people were illiterate at the time, going all Broadway was a terrific way to get the message across.

History does not record whether local kids were rounded up, put into their bathrobes and made to wear tea towels on their heads (secured by their sisters’ headbands of course) in order to play shepherds. I’m guessing that came later.

If I ever thought about it at all, I assumed that the shiny strands of tinsel we drape on our Christmas trees were just some creative marketer’s idea to sell more Christmas tree decorations. At best, I would have guessed they were meant to imitate icicles or falling stars. Well, according to the Germans, tinsel is meant to imitate spider webs.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen there is a Christmas Spider folk tale and lucky you, Auntie Awesome is here to relate it.

Because that’s not at all creepy. Not even a little bit.

Being as how it was Christmas, a family cleaned their little house from top to bottom in a flurry of brooms and dust clothes. The spiders living in the house retreated to the attic before the onslaught. Later that night, after the family finally put away the cleaning implements and went to bed, the spiders ventured forth again. They found that the family had considerately put up the perfect structure on which to spin webs – a Christmas tree. Santa arrived and was so struck by the beauty of the webs that he decided to immortalize them by transforming them into shiny silver strands. Thus – tinsel.

Yep, that’s spiderwebs you’ve got draped all over your tree.

Donkeys are fixtures in the nativity scene. A donkey carried Mary to Bethlehem and then onward to Egypt after the birth of Jesus, to escape from Herod. The donkey’s back displays a cross in commemoration of one of these treks. Or maybe because a donkey carried Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Whatever. Donkeys were the all purpose vehicle of their age.

And finally, who decided reindeer can fly? Indigenous nomadic people in Scandinavia got their freak on by feeding a hallucinogenic toadstool to their reindeer. As the toadstools passed through the digestive system of the reindeer, the toxins from the toadstools dissipated, but the hallucinogens remained intact and were excreted in the reindeer’s urine. The tribespeople drank the urine to get high. Among other visions, these nomadic stoners imagined that reindeer could fly.

If you ask me, this one looks stoned himself. Or maybe he’s in shock because – people drinking his pee.

So if you’re looking for a new Christmas tradition at your house, why not try quaffing some drugged up reindeer urine? I’m told you’ll never experience “ ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas” in quite the same way again.