Talking about the Christmas Goat (Julbock, Yule Goat) in Scandinavian tradition, and its origins within an agrarian-animistic system of beliefs. Hope you enjoy it!
Bibliography at the end of this video.
Concening straw figures (and dolls) as substitutes for animal sacrifices, and the animal sacrifice as substitute for human sacrifice, and the case of cruelty I’ve expressed in this video:
Animals were regularly sacrificed in different ways to mark the cutting of the last sheaf. There’s a differentce here between animals for consumption and animals for sacrifice (which could also then be consumed after the sacramental act). What I’m pointing concerning cruelty is the fact that the sacrificed animal that embodied the Corn Spirit was brutally killed, here’s an example:
“A cat was placed under the last bundle of the corn that had to be threshed, struck dead with the flails and roasted as a Sunday holiday meal” (Frazer 1890)*.
It took a lot of time for these animals to be killed for the purpose of sacrifice, and were beaten several times until dead. The killing and eating of sacrificial animals is part of any farming culture, since agriculture and husbandry are essentially about putting food on the table. However, the specifically sacrificed ones for such events suffered greatly. It was brutal and cruel. I have to point out that it used to be human sacrifice, then people stopped sacrificing humans in these celebrations and it was exchanged by animals, and then again the sacrifice of animals also changed and there’s now dolls and figures made out of the remains of the crops, and serve the same purpose live sacrificed animals used to, which is the embodinment of the harvest spirits.
Frazer (1890) also points out: “These customs clearly bring out the sacramental character of the harvest supper. The corn-spirit is conceived as embodiment in an animal; this divine animal is slain, and its flesh and blood are partaken by the harvesters. (…) [the animals] as substitutes for the real flesh of the divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten sacramentally… the death of the corn-spirit is represented by killing either his human or his animal representative; and the worshippers partake sacramentally either of the actual body or blood of the representative (human or animal) of the divinity, or of bread made in his likeness”. Things, fortunately, change and we find substitutes for everything.
Human and animal sacrifice progressively came to an end. *Frazer, J.G. (1890). The Golden Bough. A Study in Comparative Religion, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
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Whispers of Yggdrasil 