A tale people tellPeople tell of a poor family's bare little tree, and of spiders who spun webs over it that shone silver and gold by Christmas morning.
Legends & Stories
Christmas Legends and Folk Tales
Every Christmas has its stories, the ones grown-ups tell by the fire and children ask to hear again. Some are very old and some are new; some come from one village and some have traveled the world. In this chapter the legends and folk tales wear the crescent moon, “A tale people tell,” so you always know a story when you meet one, and where we can, we say where it comes from.
Start with the Christmas spider, meet Iceland’s Grýla and the Yule Cat, or settle in with a poem to read aloud: ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.
In this chapter
- The legend of the Christmas spider6 minA tale people tell
- The Yule Cat and Grýla, Iceland’s Christmas tales8 minA tale people tell
- Who wrote “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”?7 min
True story
Where our facts come from
- Guðrún Kvaran, "jólaköttur", Árnastofnun (the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies), June 19, 2018, quoting Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri (new ed. 1966) II:570, Paragraph 1 ("Sagnir um jólaköttinn eru ekki gamlar"; the earliest source is Jón Árnason's collection of Icelandic folk tales, gathered about the middle of the 19th century; the quotation beginning "Var það trú að sú óvættur væri þá á ferð sem var kallaður jólaköttur")
- Jón Árnason, Þjóðsagnasafn Jóns Árnasonar, "Grýla og bændur hennar" (Netútgáfan, January 2000), Paragraph 1 ("Grýla hét norn ein gömul; hún var tvígift"), in Jón Árnason's collection of Icelandic folk tales