BIZARRE CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS

BROOM STEALERS

If you want to be able to clean up after the holidays in Norway

you had better hide your brooms on Christmas Eve otherwise

broom stealing witches might come to your house…and

steal your brooms.

TIO DE NADAL

In one of the stranger traditions on our list, every year on December

8th in Catalonia, children begin to feed a log that the family keeps

in their home. Sounds crazy right? But that’s not all. They also cover

it up so it doesn’t get cold and then, on Christmas Eve, all the children

begin beating the log so that it will poop out their presents.

Who could make this stuff up?

STRAW DEVILS

In a custom dating back to pagan times, every year around Christmas

a group of Bavarians dress up as “straw devils” and run through

the city of Bischofswiesen, scaring the inhabitants.

CEILING FOOD

In Slovakia, there is a curious tradition where the patriarch of the

family fills his spoon with loksa, a type of pudding, and flings it at

the ceiling. The more he can get to stick up there the better

his harvest will be for the next year.

MARI LWYD

Meaning “grey mare” in English, this Welsh tradition involves a person

covered in a sheet while holding a horse’s skull on a pole. The jaw is

usually spring loaded so as they walk around town the Mari Lwyd

snaps at people and wreaks havoc.

KIVIAK

This one really takes things to another level. In Greenland,

Christmas lunch usually consists of Auk (a type of bird) that has

been wrapped in seal skin and buried for over half a year. Yum.

CAGANER

Once again, it’s back to Catalonia, the land of poop logs.

This time, rather than a log pooping however, it’s a person.

And not just any person – it’s a person in the middle of a nativity scene.

Why he’s there is the subject of debate.

KFC

A testament to KFC’s marketing team, they somehow managed

to get the entire country of Japan to consider their chicken a holiday

staple. It has become so popular in fact, that people sometimes

have to reserve their buckets months in advance.

GÄVLE GOAT

Every year in the town of Gävle, Sweden since 1966 a huge goat

has been constructed out of straw and every year groups of vandals

have made an attempt to burn it down. Over the past half-century

it has actually only survived 10 times and while the event has brought

the village of Gävle a certain amount of fame the official stance of the

town is that it disapproves of the burnings. Only 4 people, however,

have been caught and prosecuted in the past 50 years.

DECLARING WAR

Although North Korea is a resolutely atheist state as mandated by its

communist government, their party crashing leadership has its own

way of celebrating the holidays – by threatening to declare war.

When South Korea built a Christmas tree near the border in 2010

the North threatened to shoot it down because it was nothing more

than “propaganda”. You see, North Korean border towns don’t have the

luxury of electricity, and seeing a huge tree with millions of lights on it

across the border might convince people that the South is the place to be.