Hurdaskellir........Door-slammer is the seventh to arrive. He waits until everyone has gone to sleep, then slams all the doors in the house. He delights in the different sounds they make. The household wakes up startled from their sleep, children cry and dogs bark. All this is music to Door-slammer’s ears.
The Christmas Cat (Jolakottur) has been striking terror in the hearts of Icelandic children for generations.
The
Jolakottur, is an enormous and ferocious ugly specimen of a cat, who
has an appetite for misbehaving children. Naughty children did not get
new things to wear for Christmas, thus they would have to stay in bed,
miss all the festivities and worse, be eaten by the Christmas Cat.
Oh!
The horror of it. I was always a good girl, really I was ;) My Mother
always made sure I would have something red to wear, a candle and
playing cards for Christmas. And I am here to tell the story, so
obviously the Christmas Cat never ate me.
It is not enough that in
Iceland adults had to worry whether their Christmas dinner would be
delayed or stolen. Whether they and their animals would be scared out
of their whits by the pranksters, whose progress we have been following
here, the Jolasveinar. Their children had to deal with the Christmas
Cat, Grila and Leppaludi who had a huge appetite for naughty children.
Now,
the Jolasveinar have become generous benefactors to good children. They
each leave them a gift in their shoe. If the Children have been naughty
they will get a potato in their shoe instead of a gift. They are still
up to the tricks that their name conveys , however, they never forget
to leave something in the children’s shoes.
Not a bad life, I
would say, for the modern Icelandic Children, who get a present in
their shoe for 13 days, before Christmas. Furthermore there have been
no reports of children having been eaten by the Christmas cat, Grila or
Leppaludi, instead one hears an occasional report, that someone found
the dreaded potato in their shoe.
Tomorrow I will tell you a true story about the Christmas Cat and my Cousin.
This year I will be giving away one of the little Jolasveinar
(Christmas Elf). I will be drawing a name from the comments. All the
names for each day will be added to the hat...so that if you comment
each day your changes will be greater. Only one comment per post..please.
The Jolasveinn (Christmas
Elf) that has the most comments will be the prize. If there is an
equal number of comments on each post, there will be a drawing for the
giveaway Jolasveinn (Christmas Elf).
There is also one small rule...I would like to have a least ten comments on each post :)
The drawing will be on January 7th, 2009. Good Luck.
