Friends, are you familiar with the Gävle Goat?
The goat is an enormous Christmas display that has been set up in Slottstorget in central Gävle, Sweden built from straw, as a giant version of the classic Yule Goat. It’s classic in Sweden, okay. The town has erected a goat at the beginning of Advent since 1966, and almost every year someone burns it down.
Yep – if you’ll direct your gaze to the bafflingly detailed Wikipedia page for the noble goat, you’ll see a record of tragedy and horror. More often than not, local pranksters will set the goat on fire long before Christmas, and yet they keep bloody trying.
This year, it only took a couple of hours before someone threw a Molotov cocktail at it, because nothing pure and good can exist in the worst without the instruments of terror being turned against it:
Extra security cameras had been installed around the goat, but to no avail, according to Maria Wallberg, a spokeswoman for the event organisers. “They only recognise movement within the alarm zone, inside the fencing. Here, someone stood outside and threw a Molotov cocktail.”
The official Twitter account of the goat comforted the masses:
Oh no, such a short amount of time with you my friends. ?? But I shall rise from the ashes and see you next year again!
— Gävlebocken (@Gavlebocken) November 27, 2016
This is why we can’t have nice things. One good thing: it seems the perpetrators do face justice. The guy who burned the Gävle Goat last year is facing court, with the local municipality demanding he cough up $10,989 in damages.
Source: UPI.
Photo: Photo: Andreas Bardell.
