SOLVED: Grove Christmas Tree Mystery
For over a week now, the mystery of the Christmas Tree at the Grove Plaza toppling over just before 8 pm on the eve of the annual lighting ceremony has been the talk of the Treasure Valley. How something like this could happen is now right up there on the list of Idaho’s top unsolved mysteries like the floating cadaver of Arthur Kraege in 1923 or the Buffalo Cave Torsos found in 1979 and again in 1991. The difference in the Christmas Tree case is that we have video of the event actually occurring.
After doing a massive amount of research on the subject, and by massive amount I mean about 10 minutes of Google-ing stuff, I am almost certain that I have found the cause of the Grove Christmas Tree falling onto its side just 24 hours before it was to be lit. And when I say certain, I mean roughly three to five percent sure. The culprit was visiting Boise from Iceland. It was the Yule Cat Jólakötturinn.
In Icelandic folklore, if you don’t work hard before Christmas, this cat will cause all kinds of mischief, including but not limited to, actually eating you! Now you know why the people of Iceland put in more overtime hours in December than any other European nation and maybe that’s why the Yule Cat showed up in Boise. Perhaps if the crew had put in a little more time securing the tree, we wouldn’t have had to wait an extra week for the lighting. That said, I’m glad that it happened when it did instead of during the lighting when the plaza would have been filled with onlookers. Hopefully the new crew that put up the tree currently standing in Grove Plaza took the necessary measures to keep Jólakötturinn in Iceland where he belongs.