Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
“Everyone knows the Christmas Cat, he’s angry, huge, and mean,” begins the story of inequality and injustice for the poor, with the feline ogre who punishes those who fail to perform for their overlords. Retold in a shadow puppet play from the Icelandic story of Jólakötturinn, by Layla Holzer and Spike Dennis.
Christmas legends make the freezing nights pass faster and the children – and laborers – behave. Iceland’s Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat, warned lazy children would be eaten by a monster cat, which has roots hundreds of years back, and popularized by a poem by Johannes ur Kotlum.