Let’s be honest holidays are not as fun when you’re a grown up. Especially Christmas. You don’t get as many gifts as you used to when you’re an adult, now you’re the one in the kitchen trying to get the oversized ham shoved into the to small oven. Sure, you get to go shopping for actual gifts for friends and family instead of passing around macaroni drawings you made in class to everybody. Oh, the joys of maturity. Well decorating the Christmas tree will all ways be magical and convincing small children that there is a benevolent immortal bearded toy maker that watches there every move over a yearly cycle and rewards them based on there behavior will never not be funny. Santa Claus is the best but not everyone celebrates Christmas with a Santa Clause. In fact, many cultures around the world celebrate their Christmas or winter holidays with a totally different character or even tradition that happens to share the date of December 25th.
This Goat is on Fire
In the simple town of Gavle, Sweden the tradition exists of construction of a massive 43-foot goat statue made out of straw to celebrate the Christmas holiday. Originally introduced by the town’s mayor back in 1966. While not planned and actively discouraged by the town. Mischief-makers and arsonists just love torching this thing and have successfully set the statue ablaze 39 times. It has gotten to the point where nobodies sure to include this as part of the tradition even with the induction of a 24-hour Goat Guard to protect it from the flames of wrath. Tourists have even been caught trying to set the poor statue ablaze. Now it’s like Gavle expects its Christmas Goat to crash and burn even though it does not actively encourage it.
Norwegian Christmas Witches
In Norway, a tradition exists that the supernatural Christmas visitors are in fact mischievous witches who break into your house to steal the family Norwegian broom and then use said broom to fly all over the town raising chaos. To protect their family brooms from becoming a criminal asset, families will typically lock the broom up in a closet overnight for safe keeping then grab a firearm to defend it further, rifles are the most popular. Warning shots for the witches are fired a few times in the air before the family goes to sleep, content that they have protected the broom.
Mari Lwyd
Wales is a beautiful country filled with interesting and unique history, language, and people who value their communities and family. While not as popular as it used to be, the holiday tradition of decorating a horse skull, attaching it to a stick so its jaw can move like it’s talking (like the world’s most morbid hobby horse). Then placing a white sheet over the puppeteer so they can travel house to house, challenging homeowners to rap battles with some of the sickest rhymes ever where if the homeowners somehow lose to talking horse skull, they must pay the party of Mari Lwyd and her caretakers that travel with her as her backup singers, in beer to get them to leave. Yes, the rap battling horse skull is an actual holiday tradition for Wales, with signing insults tossed back and forth. No, I don’t know where the horse skull came from. Not all of Wales celebrates its winter holidays with Mari Lwyd, but still enough do that it is quite popular with tourists with some towns having multiple Mari Lwyd traveling door to door.
KFC Night
I have always wanted to visit Japan, ever since I completed my weeb arc I have wanted to go and see the traditional Shinto shrines, Mt. Fuji, Toho studios, and stay a night in the Godzilla hotel. Mabey even visit a KFC, except on Christmas, because Japan celebrates Christmas by eating fried chicken. KFC dinner night is treated more like a valentine’s day stand-in by making it a family dinner night or couples’ romantic night out and not having anyone to eat the chicken bucket being seen as a social failing. Its actual Christmas date is a bit vague because the massive spike in KFC purchasing takes place over three days. With lines going into the KFC sometimes stretching across city’s blocks and taking up to four hours. Japan also seems to have a year-round obsession with dressing up the Cornel Sanders that sit out in front of these KFC locations ranging from Santa Claus outfits to baseball uniforms and popular characters from shows and movies. This is one of the few on this list that we know why and how this tradition got started and it’s because the first Japanese KFC location had an ad campaign that promoted the iconic KFC family bucket as an alternative to the Western Christmas turkey dinner. This fascinated many Japanese individuals, many of whom then wanted a simple December holiday to celebrate just like the rest of the world. And then boom, Japan’s all about Kentucky Christmas and Cornel Sander’s is now a holiday icon.
Krampus Night
If you watched that Hollywood Christmas horror movie that says Krampus is a demonic anti-Santa Claus that traps ungrateful families that lack Christmas spirit in hell after systematically killing them with their own decorations and food. You would only have half the Krampus story and the other half useless Hollywood slasher entertainment that has no actual relation to the Austrian and European traditions of Krampus. Krampus hails from Austria and is more like a second Halloween than Christmas. Krampus Night falls on December 5th, the eve of Saint Nicolas’s day, and Krampus is considered to know Santa Claus himself, sort of like his partner in crime. Yes, he is a demonic goat man from hell, no he does not explicitly target people lacking Christmas cheer he just likes terrorizing the public and naughty children at large come Christmas time. Austrians will dress up like Krampus and wander around at night drinking and scaring any passerby they can in the name of Krampus’s spirit. Children are encouraged to leave their boots outside for him if you have been good he’ll leave you a present like his counterpart, but if you have been bad a rod is left in your shoes for your parents to beat you with next time you’re acting up.
Frow Perchta
Perchta comes from the alpine region of southern Germany. Her appearance ranges from a beautiful woman with white dresses to an amalgamation of goat horns, fur, teeth, and goose feet that can float, which makes Krampus a literal goat devil-man sound like a reasonable character design. But she is usually depicted as an elderly woman with a single large goose foot in most of her stories. The reason for this large goose foot is because she’s a spinster or thread maker. If you’ve worked hard all year, Perchta will leave you a coin in your shoe as a reward, but if you procrastinated and still have unspun fibers, she’ll trample them in a fit of indignant rage. Unlike Santa Claus, she’ll visit you on the twelfth night of Christmas or January 5th. and if you haven’t left out her customary bowl of porridge or cleaned your house, she’ll rip out your intestines through a hole she’ll yank open into your side with her hands and then stuff you with straw, so your stomach doesn’t collapse. So normal European Christmas shenanigans by and by, which still doesn’t have anything on the absolute insanity that is the Iceland Christmas cast. Speaking of-
The Iceland Christmas Cast – Gryla, Leppaluoi, Jolakotturinn, and the Yule Lads
This ogre and elf family with a massive cat is comprised of an ogre couple, the wife Gryla, the big bad girl boss family matriarch who eats naughty human children, her husband Leppaluoi who has this thing about soot but, like his wife, spends most of his time just munching on the local children, and the cat Jolakotturinn which is said to be larger than a house. Big kitty Jolakottutinn is the only reasonable member in this family, basically, he likes to make sure you received new clothes as a gift for the following new year, and if you haven’t, he eats you. Unlike Gryla and Leppaluoi, Jolakotturinn only cares about your drip, so all ages are game for human munchy snack time. Then there’s the 13 Yule lads who are similar to the familiar Seven Dwarfs with their naming scheme and one trait personality but are menaces to society and all around the biggest jerks you could ask for as holiday characters. They all have Icelandic names, but I don’t want to subject you to the horror that is the Icelandic alphabet, so here’s the modern English translation for all 13 of them instead. Sheep-cote clod, a double peg-legged harasser of sheep, he’s pretty easy to get rid of on account that he doesn’t have knees. Gully Gawk, who likes to hang out in gullies and, when you’re not looking, steal the milk right from the cow’s teet, what a menace. Stubby, the shortest of the bunch, likes to clean dirty pie pans so just make sure your dishes are up on a tall shelf so he can’t reach them. Spoon-Licker likes to lick spoons but only the clean ones without food scrapes as a result, he’s really thin, which makes for an easier time drop kicking him out of the kitchen. Pot-scraper has made it his personal crusade in life to scrape up the inside of good pots so make sure your nonstick are safe and out of reach. Bowl-licker, unlike his brother Spoon-licker prefers bowls and is not skinny so remember that if you’re going to be linking clean dishware, make it a bowl because they have more nutritional value than spoons. Door-Slammer has the strongest arms of the bunch and prefers to get up to his mischief at nighttime so just lock all your doors before you go to bed, and he should be neutralized. Skyr-Gobbler eats your skyr which is just yogurt with a few more steps, but who cares. Sausage Swiper no swiping. This fella just wants your sausage, so it’s best just not to have sausage for him to steal since he will not take other cuts of meat. Window-Pepper is a creep that will just invade your privacy, so make sure the blinds are closed since he’s the only one that will not enter your home or file a police report for a restraining order that could work. Doorway-Sniffer has a face that is half nose half rest of his face and uses his abnormally large nostril to sniff out hidden bread stashes, so just slam the door on him, and your bread should be fine. Meathook is tasked with stealing all other cuts of meat with his hook hand so maybe just go vegan for a month since meat is expensive and why pay 20 dollars for a sirloin only to have Meathook take off with it? Screw that. Also, there’s Candle Stealer, but Yankee candles don’t really have a scent, so that’s not really a big loss.
The Catalan Christmas Poop Log
By far the greatest Christmas tradition to ever grace the face of the earth. In the Catalan region of Spain, on December 8th, folks gather up hollow logs and decorate one end with a face, usually with a red nose and big eyes. They then dress the log in a blanket and hat and let their children beat the log with a stick while singing Christmas songs before the log is tucked in for the night and given “food” for it to eat by the same children. This process is repeated every day until the 25th, when the log has finished digesting its offerings and has “pooped” out all the gifts for the children having them appear under its blanket and cascading out the hollow end. When the log has finished relieving himself of presents, it is thrown into the fire to warm the house, hat and all.
After all this, it makes you wonder if Santa really is that normal or if are we just as weird.