The Small Straw Goat

Edith Fowke is a professor emeritus at York University and author of the
recently published Canadian Folklore: Perspectives on Canadian Culture.

This is a story based on a Danish Christmas tradition featuring a straw
goat. The goat is bought in Denmark and mailed to relatives who have
emigrated to Saskatchewan. There for years it is the featured decoration
of the Christmas tree. Other Danish customs involving the making of
stretchy Jacob’s ladders and woven heart baskets are described, and
instructions and an example of the heart basket are given.

Eventually the little goat is left on a shelf and grows sad, but years
later a grandfather decides to revive the old traditions and produces a
heart basket, a Danish gnome, an Advent calendar, and the little straw
goat, and tells the children the legends about them.

The story presents these various Danish traditions in an interesting
way, and the pen and ink illustrations are attractive. I found the
imputing of thoughts and feelings to the straw goat a bit out of place
in what is otherwise a realistic story, but such conventions have been
accepted in other tales.