Well, Christmas is almost upon us, so I’ve decided to take about the jolliest of topics: being eaten by a cat the size of a house.

This particular critter, the Jólakötturinn (literally Yule, or Christmas Cat) hails from Iceland. It’s typically depicted as a giant, fluffy black cat that shows up on Christmas Eve, while everyone’s asleep. Once at the home, it checks under the tree to see if there are any clothes under it for the children. If there aren’t any gifts under the tree, then it feats. On the kids. Who have no control over what their parents got them for Christmas.

Kind of a dick move, but whatever.

But where does the Yule Cat come from, and why is he connected to clothes in particular? The latter question is probably the easier to answer: Iceland has historically had a very robust wool trade. This makes sense when you remember that the country is called, well Iceland, and isn’t particularly known for warm, temperate winters. For that reason, back in the day, it was very, very important for the whole family to pitch in with spinning and weaving wool during the winter. Basically, if not everyone in the house gets new clothes at this time, it means that someone likely wasn’t pulling their weight.

The origins of the Yule Cat are a little murkier, however. He may be associated with Grýla, a figure that goes all the way back to the 13th century. She’s basically a giant witch who would go around at Christmas kidnapping naughty children and eating them. At some point her sons, the Yule Lads, come into play. There are 13 of them, and they also do the whole punishing naughty children thing, but also reward good children. They’re basically Iceland’s version of Santa.

As for the Yule Cat, he’s considered to be a companion of Grýla, the Yule Lads, or both. As for why he’s a cat, it’s most likely because cats figure heavily into Norse mythology, and Iceland was initially colonized by the Norse. Another reason is likely that there are a lot of cats in Iceland, both pets and feral, so the idea of a cat getting large enough to eat people isn’t really much of a stretch from there.

So that, my friends, is a brief primer on the Yule Cat. To be fair, if I saw him my first reaction would probably be to shout KITTY before gushing over how cute his murder mittens are, right up until the point that he swallows me whole.

I am very fond of cats, in case you couldn’t tell.