what really gets me about the gavle goat is that it’s a totally spontaneously-arising tradition. it’s not outside the realm of possibility that if you didn’t know the real context you might think it’s a community event where the goat is burned in a similar way to yule logs. instead its an extremely illicit tradition of random people, not organized in any way, continually committing arson on this one particular town’s giant straw goat structure, leading to the community creating more and more increasingly elaborate ways to prevent said arson, only somewhat successfully. some people just want to watch the goat burn!