In America, the holiday season is the time for kissing under the mistletoe, eggnogging yourself silly, and baking bribes for the big guy so he will deliver big-time on Christmas morning.

Of course, all of that celebratory good cheer is supposed to be reserved for nice boys and girls—policed by Santa’s shelf-sitting surveillance operative, whose watchful stare silently threatens to save you a spot on the naughty list—but I am pretty sure if push came to shove, that guy would quickly become known as “Elf in a Drawer.”

In Iceland, however, you can’t fuck around with Christmas spirits. If you do, you could wind up getting eaten. Let me repeat that just so we are all perfectly clear: eaten. And you don’t even have to do anything naughty to earn such a fate. As Reddit user Atwenfor shared this week, Icelandic Christmases include tales of the terrifying Yule Cat: a giant feline who stalks the snowy countryside on Christmas Eve, ready to gobble up any poor sap who wasn’t gifted new clothes.

The Yule Cat folklore started long ago (so long, in fact, that the National Museum of Iceland isn’t quite sure when Yule Cat first arrived on the scene) but continues to spur the Icelandic people to look sharp around Christmas time.

Historians believe the tale began as a way to encourage hard work during the holidays.

“Some sources suggest that female farm workers in the old days worked extremely hard to produce one item of clothing after another during Advent, all in an effort to save the farm folk from the claws of the Yule Cat. “It is likely that the Yule Cat myth was originally designed to urge farm workers to perform well prior to Christmas and to finish their tasks. As a reward, they would receive a new item of clothing from their masters. Those who did not complete their tasks, however, received no gift from their master, thus ‘ending up in the Yule Cat.’ “In other words, the Yule Cat helped combat laziness and inertia.”

The people of Iceland are also encouraged to share with those who are less fortunate because it would be pretty awful for a friend to be featured in Yule Cat’s holiday feast just because he couldn’t afford new threads.

Even if you do manage to escape Yule Cat’s claws on Christmas Eve, he’s got a whole cast of fearsome friends who show up throughout the season:

Grýla

Grýla is a horrifying ogre who lives in a cave and emerges at Christmas to eat naughty children. According to the National Museum of Iceland, here’s how she’s described in folk tales:

“Grýla has three heads and three eyes in each head … Horribly long, curved fingernails, icy blue eyes at the back of the head and horns like a goat, her ears dangle down to her shoulders and are attached to the nose in front.

“She has a beard on her chin that is like knotted yarn on a weave with tangles hanging from it, while her teeth are like burnt rocks in a grate.”

Grýla has allegedly eaten a few of her husbands, but these days she hangs out with the latest one named Leppalúði. He doesn’t seem to do much, but did father 20 of her children—including the 13 Yule Lads.

The Yule Lads

The Yule Lads can be pretty cool and are considered the 13 Santas of Iceland. If you’re good, they will leave candy in your shoes for 13 days straight! Still, when you have a child-eating troll-woman as a mother, you are bound to have some rough edges.

Each Lad manages to cause mischief in his own special way. Most of them try to steal food (there’s one who licks spoons, one who licks bowls, one who scrapes pots, and one who swipes sausages, for instance) but the best one is probably “Sheep-Cote Clod,” who has stiff peg-legs and for some reason likes to harass sheep. (What this means is open to interpretation.)

After their work is done, we can only imagine they go home to their cave to celebrate with Mom, who perhaps—with the help of her friend Yule Cat—cooks up a delicious Christmas dinner of naughty children and unfashionable adults.

So this year, perhaps it’s time to give that Shelf Elf a tip of your hat. Bake an extra cookie for ol’ Santa Claus, even if you know you’ve been naughty. That coal he’s bringing by for you doesn’t seem so bad after all.