Silly Swedes

It’s one thing to be persistent. No one likes a quitter.

But sometimes, you gotta face facts and throw in the towel. Or in the case of Gavle, Sweden, throw in the goat.

In that Swedish town, a giant straw goat is built each year as a Christmas tradition.

Don’t ask me why. Hey, we have some strange Christmas traditions too – like big discounts on large-screen TVs.

But for 24 times since the first straw goat was set up in 1966, some idiot has burned it down. According to the news story, “It has also been smashed several times, run over by a car and had its legs cut off.”

In other words, it’s a moron magnet. Inevitably, a bunch of Swedish kids get drunk or stoned and say to each other one night in late December, “Hey, let’s go burn down the goat!”

(OK, they probably say it in Swedish, but you get my point.)

And my larger point is that it’s hopeless. The thing has been torched so many times – and the night blaze is probably pretty impressive – that it’s a wonder it makes it through any Christmas at all.

For a couple of years town officials doused it in fireproof chemicals. But that made it "look like a brown terrier instead of a yellow straw goat," so they stopped that. And the burning resumed.

The way I see it, the Gavle town council needs to either make the goat out of metal, so it won’t burn, or fill it with TNT so it will wipe out the arsonists.

Or give up the tradition altogether and start offering big discounts on large-screen TVs.