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Avapithecus — Yule Goat
#christmas #character #design #goat #referencesheet #yule
Published: 2024-12-03 11:34:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 5525; Favourites: 66; Downloads: 1
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Description
Ho ho hell yeah it's December again bitches! It's my favorite time of year, where the frigid eldritch horror that is our planet Earth forces us all indoors with one another and slap us across the face with the cold hard reality that by comparison, maybe we aren't all so bad after all. It doesn't matter if we celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas or Kwanzaa or whatever other human holiday we made up somewhere along the way, so long as we all crack a cold one for another year survived together! But Ms. Ava, I hear little Billy asking, what do you celebrate? Well class, as a lot of you know by now, I'm a Heathen, so like any good pagan I naturally celebrate… er… Christmas. Well gee, teach that's anticlimactic. Shouldn't you celebrate Yule instead? Isn't that the viking Christmas? Well sure, and I mean I'd like to, but there's a few reasons I've yet to really bother with reconstructing Yule.
For one, I just… don't have anyone to celebrate with 
Lastly, historical pagan holidays are often just frustratingly inaccessible to reconstructionists like myself. The sagas and eddas provide a shit load of theological content, but not much explanation of cultural practices. Afterall, why would they? The authors of these texts were doing so under the assumption that their audience already knew all the nuances and innuendos of everyday life. Think about it, I don't have to explain to you why Indiana law limits the sale of alcohol on Sundays to between 12 and 8 PM, and of course we all know how to use the three seashells. Mind you, I think that's what attracts a lot of us to Heathenry in the first place. I for one feel quite liberated that this faith doesn't come with any specific commandments or rituals and all that's really left for us to do is interpret the source material. If your goal is to reconstruct an entire holiday with distinct traditions that everyone can recognize like the other big winter celebrations, then you've got a lot of slack to pick up.
We do know that Yule seems to be one of the most important holidays of the early Germanic peoples. Despite months having vastly different names depending on which calendar you reference from different corners of the European continent, Yule is (usually) common between all of them. It's attested in Old English as “geol”, in Old Norse as “jól”, and in Gothic as “jiuleis”. It's in that last form that we get our oldest attestation of the holiday, actually, specifically from a liturgical calendar in Codex Ambrosius A, a 6th century document which David Landau of Tampere University argues dates more precisely to the 30th year of Theodoric the Great (522 CE give or take a year). These linguistic cousins all ultimately descend from the Proto-Germanic root “*jehwla-”, which means… uhm… well no one is quite sure actually. It doesn't seem to be related to any other Indo-European words. I mean there's Old French “jolif” meaning “festive”, which may or may not us our modern English word “jolly”, but that's a late medieval loan word derived from Jól (or… maybe the Latin “gaudere” meaning “rejoice”, that's a linguistic flame war I'm not about to throw my hat into), and not a cognate. Landau claimed Yule is a corruption of Latin “jubilaeus” (English “jubilee”), but Jorma Koivulehto of the University of Helsinki demonstrated that the phonemes are natural cognates to one another, meaning the word has to stretch back to a Proto-Germanic phase, before the Romans picked up “jubilee” from the Hebrew Bible and spread it to the region.
Idk man maybe it's just Odin trolling us again. One of his many names is “Jólnir”, literally just “the Yule guy”, so clearly the ancients thought he had some finger in the pie like he always does. In fact, in the Ynglinga Saga, Snorri Sturluson specifically states that Odin instituted three feast days for the people of Sweden back in that vague and contradictory timespan Snorri tries to shoehorn the gods into as human rulers in his version of history. One feast was to be held on the first day of winter (which by the old Germanic reckoning would be the first full moon of October) for a good year, another was to be held in the middle of winter, i.e. the Solstice (which was the Germanic new year), for a bountiful crop, and lastly one on the first day of summer for victory in battle. That Solstice festival, while not named outright in Snorri's account, corresponds exactly to the reckoning given to us by the Venerable Bede from back in the 8th century. Bede’s calendar is the one you're most likely to see modern pagans taking month names from, and without getting too deep into the weeds and giving myself a reconstructionist aneurysm, Bede states that Yule is both the name of the holiday and the name of the two months it's sandwiched between (roughly our December and January). He doesn't go into any details about practice though, only going so far as to say that on what he calls Christmas, the Heathens celebrate “Mōdraniht” (literally “Mother's Night”) “because, we suspect, of the ceremonies they enacted all that night”. That is… the vaguest shit I have ever pulled my hair out over, and I will save that rant for another day.
So what other primary sources can we draw inspiration from? There's one that's going to come up more than any other because, unlike Bede, it's not totally fucking useless: the Saga of Haakon the Good. Haakon the Good was a king of Norway who reigned from 934 to 961, and the exploits of his duties have been passed down to us in Snorri's Heimskringla. There's a lot of war talk and lore dumps in Snorri's telling before we get to the episode relevant to today's blurb: a Yule festival hosted by Haakon's homie, Jarl Sigurd, which the king was expected to attend. Now, Haakon was one of Norway's first Christian kings, but since literally everyone else in his political circle and broader population was Heathen, he decided it was best to simply practice his personal religion privately, which I respect. He didn't initially try to push his faith on his people, in fact he made an effort to bring them all together by pushing Yule up a teensy bit to December 25th. It didn't matter whether you were celebrating Christmas or the old holiday, so long as you celebrated together, and that's an environment we should all strive for. You were also required by law to drink a shitload of ale (about 4 gallons) or else face a legal fine, because this party's gonna last three whole days and if we gotta get the cops involved to make sure this place is krunk as fuck, we will.
According to the saga, the custom was to kick Yule off with a massive potluck. All the townsfolk were expected to bring food and supplies to the temple for one big communal banquet the likes of which only vikings can devour. Livestock animals, horses in particular, were ritually sacrificed at the event. Their blood was collected in special bowls and then flicked onto the walls, idols, and party guests with a bundle of twigs to sanctify the temple while the meat was cooking. A festive line of fireplaces were set up down the middle of the temple floor, each with a cauldron above them for cookin the good shit. Drinks were passed around the fires so that each person could make a toast. Whoever was hosting the party and/or had the highest authority in the room was specifically expected to toast three times to the gods: once to Odin for victory, once to Njordr for prosperity, and once to Freyr for peace. Then it was the commonfolk’s turn to toast their chief, their kinsman, and their ancestors as they saw fit. How related this is to the special oaths highlighted in Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar and Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, I can't quite tell. These oaths were considered especially powerful, kinda like our modern New Years’ resolutions, except in this society you would've been executed for not fulfilling your promise. You'd swear them with your hand on a boar dedicated to Freyr like a Bible in court, which would make sense in the context of the feasting, but both those poems I mentioned specifically say this would've occurred on Yule Eve. Idk I think as modern Heathens we can streamline that process a little bit, and ya know do away with beheading anyone who doesn't learn a new language or lose 10 pounds by 2026. I mean come on guys, we all know our species ain't making it that far anyway.
Eventually King Haakon rolls up to the shindig, and… he kinda kills the mood when he starts off saying “oh hey this is awesome, so glad we're all here, but you know what would make this even more awesome? If we all believed in Jesus!” As always happens when your pastor tries to be cool, this was followed by blank stares and drunken belches. The farmers started pointing out that this whole “sabbath” thing Haakon was proposing wasn't exactly compatible with their entire agricultural quota and trying to implement that would be a major economic problem. And, you know, it's a bit of a dick move to try and convert someone on their own fucking holiday. Since the last thing you want drunk people to believe is that you owe them money and are looking for a fight, Jarl Sigurd chimed in like “hahahahaha oh gee willickers you sure are a jokester Haakon that was such a funny kneeslapper and to show how much of a good sport you are you're absolutely gonna take back what you said and come bless this sacrifice right, buddy??”
So Haakon played his hand a little too early and was now in a bit of a pickle. He'd already lost points with his people for taking his food into a private chamber during previous feasts, which a king was normally expected to attend publicly. You know, just on the off chance some of that dirty pagan air contaminated his piece of toast with Jesus's face on it or whatever. With presumably an extremely unsubtle jab of his elbow, Sigurd very succinctly told the king he fuckin needed to be present if he didn't want a riot powered by 4 gallons of alcohol per person sicked on his ass. Haakon relented, sitting on his throne as Sigurd made a toast to Odin. Sigurd then passed the drinking horn to his king, who I can only imagine made a sort of southern belle heavens-to-betsy swoon as he made the sign of the cross over his booze. This baffled everyone in the room, and before they could question why their king wasn't doing the usual dedication to the gods, ultimate hype man Sigurd chimed in saying “ohhhh well… see… uh… what Haakon just did was the… sign of… the… hammer! Yeah that's it! That was totally a gesture blessing the ale in the name of Thor. Totally.”
That's probably the worst excuse I've ever heard, but remember these people were running off of 4 gallons of alcohol, so you probably could've said anything and they'd buy it. At the very least, it got them to day two, where Haakon's capacity to be a pissant was really tested. The people wanted him to partake in the horse meat that was cooking, and that was just too far for Haakon, which is fair, all things being equal. To my modern sensibilities, I find it a bit rude to try and shove something onto someone's plate without respecting their dietary restrictions. Sigurd had to prevent a riot however, so when the king refused, he offered a compromise. He didn't have to eat it, he just had to drink some of the gravy. Haakon crossed his arms in his high chair, pouted, and said “nu!” Sigurd's eye twitched. Okay. Just chew on some of the fat then. “Nu!” Sigurd clenched his fists and turned a bit red. Okay. Okay! Fine, sure. How bout this then: you lean your thick head over the handle of the pot where the steam from the meal is accumulating and just… leave your mouth open. Will that suffice, you difficult motherfucker? Haakon grumbled something like “grmrphiguess…” went over to the handle in question, draped a linen cloth over the handle, and then opened his mouth over this blasted pagan stew before sulking back to his throne. Hilariously, this paragraph in the saga ends with just “and neither side was well pleased”. Bro just fuckin killed the party, what a square. The next year, the townsfolk got right to the point and said we're just kinda gonna beat the fucking shit out of you if you don't play ball old man, and that seemed to get the message across.
So that's about as much as our primary sources have to tell us about a historically accurate Heathen Yule, sparse but malleable all the same. Replace the blood sacrifice with a sprinkling of libations, get a nice big ham on the table instead of horse meat, cut back on the alcohol content (or don't, I won't judge, just be responsible), and make your Yule resolutions a bit less murdery and you've got a festival you can damn near recreate word for word that's compatible with both modern sensibilities and historically attested methods of worship. It sounds lovely, honestly. Now if only I had friends. But Ms. Avaaaaa, Billy's whining again because Billy's a little bitch, doesn't it feel like we're missing a lot? What about all that other pagan stuff that's held over to the modern day? What about the Yule Goat? Or Krampus? Or my weird uncle tearing the family apart over his alternative views on Pogs? Well Billy, the problem is… I don't really think any of those things are pagan. Krampus is something I'd like to cover in his own blurb, and I frankly can't help you with your uncle, so let's take the Yule Goat as an example:
A Yule Goat (or “Julebukk”) is a popular Christmas ornament in Scandinavian homes which is basically just a little bundle of straw braided and ribboned into the shape of a goat. If you look this up online, you're going to see a lot of blogs claim that this fun little tradition originated as a pagan effigy dedicated to Thor, and that they were specifically woven from the last pluck of wheat from that year's harvest, as that bundle was believed to be supernaturally significant. Now that's all well and good, and if that's enough for your spiritual satisfaction, far be it from me to take that away from you. I'm all for cultural exchange regardless of where it comes from, hell I came to polytheism specifically because it doesn't have the same hangups on some weird concept of authenticity that Christianity does. Thor does have two goats that pull his chariot across the sky, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, and there's even an episode in the Prose Edda where Thor slaughters his goats for a pitstop and then uses Mjölnir to zap them back to life, so I could easily see how you could incorporate this theme of rebirth into a celebration of the days getting longer. However, if you're a stupid bitch who hates fun like me, I'm sorry to say you're not going to find any justification for any of the supposed pagan connotations of the Yule Goat in any medieval source. I suspect it's because, as far as I've been able to trace, Yule Goats as we know them today were in actuality invented in the late 1800s, well within a Christian context.
Let's start in the most cheerful, festive setting you could possibly host the holidays in: a straight up famine. Specifically, it's the famine that ravaged Sweden and Finland from 1867 to 1869. The abridged version of this horrendous period of history was that shitty weather (even by the normal standards for Scandinavian weather) cut the yearly harvest yield by half, starving 270,000 farmers to death. That to me would seem like an indisputable sign that God has abandoned us all, but these were 19th century rural peasants, so if anything their superstition only doubled down. One particular imp that was haunting these farmers was an elvish creature called a “nisse” or “tomte”. They're attested by name as far back as the 14th century, but at this point in history they'd become associated specifically with Christmas time. The nisse was believed to have a contract with the members of the household wherein it would watch over the farm and grant boons to their prosperity, but only so long as the family accounted for every tiniest scrap of food and didn't let a single grain go to waste. If they didn't, he'd abandon them and take his good fortune with them. It's a pretty grim metaphor clearly manufactured as a way to rationalize the necessities and struggles of surviving the 1867 famine. This is the context where that myth of the last bundle of wheat being the most supernaturally charged fits in, not medieval paganism. Again, not letting anything go to waste, children would gather all the leftover straw and braid them into little ornaments, often because that was the only crafting materials they had at their disposal, and while the shapes they created did include goats, but also other common farm animals and more abstract things like stars and crowns.
The Yule Goat didn't start making a distinct name for itself until after the famine had passed and people didn't have to save every penny for food. There's an old tradition in Sweden where kids were essentially taken out trick-or-treating, dressing in costumes and demanding candy from strangers, but like Christmas themed. That's fucking horseshit. How can we Americans dare to claim we're the greatest country on Earth when we don't have Christmas trick-or-treating??? Anyway, the costumes for this event in the 19th century were pretty diverse just like the ones you'd see on Halloween today. The Yule Goat was just one of hundreds of stock characters you could go as, derived from a devil-like stage costume donned at Christmas pageants until those government nerds in Stockholm banned the festival in 1721 for being too rowdy and unchristian. Fuckin lame. By 1870, it had become popular for the adults leading their kids around the neighborhood to dress up in furs and horns, and for jackass teenagers to go around pulling pranks on people and demand gifts lest the victims pay retribution, which gave the goat a unique character that people could identify with. By the time lyricist Sigurd Sköldberg-Petterson published the song “Liten julvisa” in 1901, the Yule Goat had been sanitized into a friendlier fellow who went door to door handing out gifts instead of demanding them. Today, that role has largely been subsumed by the image of Santa Claus brought over from the United States, but older Swedes still remember the Yule Goat as their favorite bit of holiday lore, and making a little replica of him out of straw remains a popular tradition. Or a big replica, actually. Ever since 1966, a 40-foot Yule Goat has been erected annually in the city of Gävle, despite 42 of those goats getting destroyed in some way, usually intentionally. I find that hilarious because despite it being illegal to burn down the goat and new security measures being put in every year, people keep inventing new ways to Mission Impossible past the guards and commit annual arson. I mean come on, it's a giant pile of straw, it's practically begging to be burnt down. It's really just a matter of taking bets as to who's gonna do the deed and when they're gonna make it happen. I love that. I don't care what religion you practice or what holiday you celebrate, little Billy, “fuck the Man” will always be the one true meaning of Christmas.
Design notes, I fucking hate goats. It's nothing personal. They're cute and all. Drawing horns that twist like this is an utter pain in the ass, though. Oh but Ava don't you have that one OC with the big goat horns, aren't you used to it by now? Well yes I do have her but she represents the neverending ceaseless agony that makes me want to go back to sleep when I'm awake and expend all my energy running from monsters as I sleep, so drawing her horns is a pain in my ass too. Thankfully, I got there eventually, and I'm actually quite happy with how the whole composition came together after the horn debacle. Not really much else to go into here, I mean it's a goat made of straw and wrapped with ribbons. It makes for a good D&D monster icon, so it fulfills its purpose.
