The Christmas Cat

The Christmas cat at Lækjartorg has become a regular visitor to the city's Christmas celebrations and heralds the beginning of the Christmas atmosphere in downtown Reykjavík. 

The Christmas Cat is among the best-known Icelandic Christmas creatures. It is a humongous animal, well known to people of all ages in Iceland. As legend has it, the Cat eats those who don‘t get new clothes for Christmas. To avoid this horrible fate, you‘d better do your chores to receive only new socks or some simple garment. Today, the Cat is often said to be the household pet of equally terrifying giantess Grýla and her lazy husband Leppalúði, the parents of the so-called Yule Lads. Whether this is true or not no one knows, but what we can say for sure is that if we all help each other in the good spirit of the season, no one should have to be gobbled up by the Cat – if it really does exist anywhere outside of all the fascinating stories and poems told about it.