Oh the humanity. Or something like that. Here's the cute goat in the town of Gävle, Sweden before the burning started. Maybe there's a Swedish reader or someone who knows more about the local culture who can fill us in on the history of the yule goat. Then they can explain why the goat keeps getting torched despite local efforts to protect it. Here's an unconfirmed filming of the incident. Seems a bit odd, but at least the local police haven't pulled guns on the arsonists, yet.
Arsonists set fire early on Wednesday to a giant straw statue of the Swedish Yule goat, a forerunner to Santa Claus in Sweden, defying security measures for a third year in a row.
Police in Gavle, north of Stockholm, said an unknown number of attackers had torched the goat in the early morning hours, leaving a blackened skeleton standing in the town square.
"It's a tradition to burn it down," Lofberg said. "It's happened an untold number of times since the 1960s ... it's been burned down more years than it's survived."
