(Farmers tell this tale to their workers as an incentive to finish processing wool before autumn comes, so everyone can get their new clothes made before the slob-eating Christmas Cat shows up.) This very weird fable sounds like something from the Viking Age, but it isn’t really that old-it first appeared in print in the 19th century and wasn’t popularized ( in poem form, in true Icelandic style) until the early 20th. He’s got an eye for fashion and is looking for people-kids, adults, whatever-who aren’t wearing fine new clothes for Christmas Eve. But this giant, bloodthirsty cat-monster isn’t looking to make naughty children into his meal, as you might expect. It seems that Íslendingar grow up in fear of the ferocious Jólakötturinn, the Yule Cat, who prowls the frozen countryside around Christmastime, looking for humans to eat. Iceland, for all of its twee elven aesthetic and excellent quality of living, has some pretty savage Christmas stories. THEY’LL EAT YOU FOR CHRISTMAS DINNER.Ī quaint Christmas card from around 1885. This has been a persistent myth that followed emigrants to the New World in 1929, the Nebraska State Journal printed an alleged report from a doctor who said he’d witnessed a housecat “lying on the baby’s breast, a paw on either side of the babe’s mouth, the cat’s lips pressing those of the child and the infant’s face as pale as that of a corpse, its lips with the blueness of death.” 2. (In some versions of the tale, the cat is jealous because the newborn infant has suddenly deprived it of attention other versions say it’s not jealousy but the scent of milk on the baby’s lips that inspires them.) In 1791, a jury at a coroner’s inquest in Plymouth, England, found a cat guilty of infanticide in this way. THEY’LL STEAL YOUR BABY’S BREATH.įor centuries, folks in England believed that a cat is liable to climb into an infant’s crib and “suck” the child’s breath until it suffocates and dies. Whether the tales are true or not (they’re not), here are some of the more curious beliefs different cultures have held about felines throughout history. Cats pop up in many religions as well, as both angelic and devilish figures. Since time immemorial, civilizations across the world have been devising myths about these curious creatures, ranging from superstitions about their supposed luckiness to stories of them playing fiddles, hanging out in cradles, or sailing the sea with owls in pea-green boats. It’s not just the internet that’s obsessed with cats.
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