5 Cool (or Cruel) Creatures of Christmas Folklore

What would the Christmas season be like without a few weird and magical creatures? It'd certainly be less interesting - so why don't we take a look at...

• The Fashion-Policing Yule Cat of Iceland
• Badalisc, the Lusty Gossip of Italy
• How Flying Reindeer Were Inspired by Fungal Hallucinations
• The Embarrassingly Elusive Yeti
• Mari Lwyd, the Pale, Skeletal and Singing Horse of Wales

The Fashion-Policing Yule Cat of Iceland

Do you remember Christmas as a kid? The race to the tree, the feeling of paper tearing away from parcels... and finding a woolly jumper rather than the latest, greatest toy?

For the children of Iceland, a gift of new clothing could be the difference between life and death... but not for the reasons you might expect. Anyone that didn't get something new to wear could draw the attention of Jólakötturinn, a massive, monstrous and man-eating cat that loved nothing more than devouring the idle and lazy.

So you might be wondering the link between new clothing and avoiding death by cat. It harks back to the sheep farming tradition that Iceland relied upon - and the fact that hard workers were rewarded with garments made from the freshly spun wool. If you didn't contribute, you probably didn't get any new clothing... which marked anyone wandering about in a threadbare outfit as a poor worker.

For children this took on a slightly different aspect - be well behaved and do your chores... or you might not get the new woolly jumper that'll save you from being cat chow!

Badalisc, the Lusty Gossip of Italy

One of the more unique creatures of Christmas can be found around the woods of Valle Camonica in Italy. This entity is known as the Badalisc (there doesn't seem to be any direct link between it and the basilisk) and each year the village of Andrista holds a festival to lure him out of seclusion.

The celebration begins on the twelfth night of Christmas, when the youths of the village enter the woods to capture the mythical creature. The Badalisc (played by a costumed villager) resembles a horned snake with a goat-like head and coat of fur - it's accompanied into the village by an entourage of handlers, witches banging milk pails, shepherds, a "grim" hunchback and a young lady to tempt it onwards!

The festival itself matches the beast for strangeness. The hunchback and the Badalisc face off in a "rustic duel" at the village entrance, before being led through the streets on a rope while lunging at the crowd. Lastly, it gives a satirical speech (delivered through an interpreter) to the townsfolk that mocks local gossip.

The Badalisc festival is thought to be a kind of "purifying" ceremony allowing local scandals and grievances to be dragged out into the open. Either way, the festival ends in dancing and feasting with the creature as the guest of honor!

How Flying Reindeer Were Inspired by Fungal Hallucinations

Flying reindeer are deeply tied into the image of Christmas (being used to pull Santa's sleigh through the winter sky, for example) but the beasts are not the most aerodynamic of animals - have you ever wondered where the idea came from?

Well, the Sami people knew that reindeer love eating mushrooms - and one of the fungi they feast on is the fly agaric. This mushroom is rather toxic to humans (it can even be fatal) but also quite hallucinogenic.

The Sami realized that the urine of agaric-eating reindeer kept the hallucinogenic properties of the fungus, but didn't make a human particularly sick... though it may be best not to speculate exactly how they found this out!

It's thought that the proximity of the reindeer combined with the visual distortions, confusion and even delusions caused by the hallucinogenic urine led to tales of flying reindeer - something that would eventually work its way into Christmas legend!

The Embarrassingly Elusive Yeti

Is there really any mythical creature more associated with snow and winter than the yeti?

Described as being bigger than a man and sometimes known as metoh-kangmi (man-bear-snowman) in Tibet, the yeti is a large, furred and bipedal creature said to live above the snowline of the Himalayas. It's also a creature than many people claim really exists!

The creature doesn't have a reputation for being particularly dangerous... which may explain why so many people have attempted to track a specimen down (with mixed results.) In 1986 a "genuine" photo of a yeti was brought back from the mountains and acclaimed as the real deal by a number of prominent scientists... only for a subsequent expedition to discover the "yeti" hadn't moved and was actually a distant rock outcrop.

Other theories include that that yeti might be a surviving example of Gigantopithecus, a ten foot tall ape thought to have died out 100,000 years ago, or that "yeti sightings" might actually be a kind of hybrid bear. Some research has found DNA links between samples of "yeti" fur and the jawbone of an ancient polar bear!

Mari Lwyd, the Pale, Skeletal and Singing Horse of Wales

Households in Wales sometimes receive a welcome but slightly worrying visitor during the Christmas season - welcome because it brings good luck, but worrying because a talking horse skull garbed in white robes is throwing insults at them!

Mari Lwyd (or Y Fari Lwyd) roughly translates as the grey mare. It's not really known how old this character is - it has been around for at least a couple of centuries, but it may draw on much earlier folklore or tradition. Horses take pride of place in ancient Celtic mythology, having associations with power, fertility and battlefield prowess. Meanwhile, grey or white animals were sometimes said to be able to travel between the living world and that of the dead. Mari Lwyd is therefore represented by a horse skull (sometimes with a spring bound to her lower jaw, making it bounce as she moves) with gown of white fabric hiding her puppeteer!

The actual tradition isn't that sinister in practice. Mari Lwyd and a group of costumed folk turn up outside houses or pubs and challenge the occupants to a musical (and insult-filled) rhyming contest, eventually "winning" and being let in. Once inside, Mari Lwyd runs around causing a ruckus and scaring off any "evil spirits" lurking inside... followed by the whole group being rewarded with food and drink!

Thanks for reading - you might also like

• Wolf, Monster or Murderer: The Beast of Gévaudan on Vocal
• 20 Wonderful, Wild and Wicked Creatures of Europe's Folklore on Blogspot

Sources and Further Info:

• The child-eating Christmas Yule Cat: what are the origins of this Icelandic folklore?
• La Storia del Badalisc
• Fungi, Folklore and Christmas: How Fly Agarics Shaped our Festive Season
• The Deceptive Mushroom: Accidental Amanita muscaria Poisoning
• What's a Yeti – and Could They Really Exist?
• The Magic Of The Mari...
• Christmas Traditions: The Mari Lwyd