{"id":507,"date":"2018-12-27T09:26:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T09:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/?p=507"},"modified":"2018-12-27T09:26:08","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T09:26:08","slug":"a-christmas-tail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas tail&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got curious if there were any festive stories about cats. This isn&#8217;t quite what I was looking for, but here&#8217;s the story of\u00a0J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin, the Yule Cat.<\/p>\n<p><em>J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin &#8211;\u00a0The Yule Cat<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Yule Cat (<em>J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin<\/em>) is a huge, vicious creature that lurks in the snowy Icelandic countryside, waiting to devour people who have not received new clothes to wear for Christmas. In\u00a0rural societies, employers rewarded members of their household with new garments and new sheepskin shoes.<\/p>\n<p>These gifts; a prize for doing good work, encouraged everyone to work hard on the lead-up to Christmas, and to this day Icelanders still find it important to wear new clothes on Christmas Eve when the celebrations begin. \u201cDevoured by the Christmas cat\u201d is said about those who don\u2019t do so, or don\u2019t receive a new garment as a gift.<\/p>\n<p>The tales vary, and in some, J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin only eats their food and presents, not the actual people.<\/p>\n<p>J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin is part of Gryla and the 13 Yule Lads family. If you&#8217;d like to know more about the entire folktale, it&#8217;s easy to find with a quick internet search.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.zmescience.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/christmas-cat-2.jpg\" alt=\"Image result for J\u00c3\u00b3lak\u00c3\u00b6tturin the christmas cat\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Hope everyone got new clothes for Christmas&#8230;.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Information: National Geographic<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Picture: ZME Science<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got curious if there were any festive stories about cats. This isn&#8217;t quite what I was looking for, but here&#8217;s the story of\u00a0J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin, the Yule Cat. J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin &#8211;\u00a0The Yule Cat The Yule Cat (J\u00f3lak\u00f6tturin) is a huge, vicious creature&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ailurophile.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}