In a previous blog I lamented about the wackos who seemingly find great joy in dismantling, destroying, or stealing homeowners’ outdoor Christmas decorations, including the incident where someone stole a baby Jesus statute from a resident’s nativity set and replaced it with a can of beer. I questioned whether the events were isolated or if this holiday madness was a growing epidemic. After hearing about this next incident I think I have my answer.
Christmas grinches have struck again. Not in South Carolina, Southern California or even Savannah, Georgia… this time they’ve gone global… all the way to central Sweden. According to news reports, vandals tried to set fire to a giant straw goat–the community’s official Christmas monument—in central Sweden, but were foiled because it had been soaked with flame-resistant chemicals.
According to local police, this latest overnight raid was the season’s first attack on the 43-foot-high Christmas goat in the city of Gavle, 90 miles north of Stockholm, but it wasn’t the first attack in history. Apparently, the goat has been burned down more than 20 times in the last 40 years in what has become a yule tradition. But, this time officials said they were prepared.
“Somebody tried to set fire to the right front leg, but the flame-resistant chemical worked 100 percent,” the chairman of the goat committee told local reporters.
“There’s smell of gasoline and the ribbon is a bit smutty, but otherwise it’s unhurt,” he said.
According to police records, since it was first erected on December 3, 1966 the goat has been hit by flaming arrows, run over by a car, and even had its legs cut off. It has survived only 10 times beyond Christmas Day. Those past incidents prompted officials to take extra precautions this year, hence the flame-resistant chemicals. According to news reports, officials not only doused the straw goat with the chemicals they also set up two 24-hour Web cams to try to protect it.
Unfortunately, in the most recent attack the perpetrators managed to sneak past the cameras by coming in at the only angle the cameras did not reach. They remain at large along with the people who burned down last year’s goat. Those vandals dressed up as Santa Claus and the Gingerbread Man and were never caught.
What is wrong with some people?
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