So what's your culture's weird ass Christmas tradition?
So what's your culture's weird ass Christmas tradition?
I'm the most Kkkrackkkers of Amerikkkans so my tradition is just getting drunk off mulled wine and re-watching bad holiday movies with relatives I only kinda like.
I'm sometimes a little jealous of people who have weirder shit going on, like gremlins who slam doors and steal sausages or shitting Christmas logs. We need to bring back weird ass half-pagan shit.
My father said that when he was a kid in Sicily, they would have a witch deliver presents around this time of year. We don't really practice it here but, many Americans can't believe it when you first tell them.
Other than that, pannatone, which has become Americanized with the addition of chocolate chips.
Nothing particularly weird comes to mind--only thing notable is that it's common in Latin America to stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve to open presents.
Not my culture, but it tickles me that where Christmas is associated with family in most of the world, in Japan (where only ~1% of the population is Christian) it's associated with couples. More pointedly, there's a common pun on the word for Christmas Eve (聖夜 seiya, lit. "holy night") which swaps the character for "holy" with the homophonous 性 (sei, "sex") because it's the #1 night for couples to bang--even more so than Valentine's Day.
It’s a tie between the Nativity scene shitter and the Yule log you beat with a stick until it shits candy.
Summer Christmas and Dezemba (slang for December holidays, it's the longest holiday break) parties everywhere. Pool parties, lots of braais/grilling/BBQ, party music and atmosphere everywhere. Lots of drinking.
This is how my culture does christmas: We start thinking about christmas in mid September. We make lists of all the people we have to buy gifts for and try to decide what to get them as well as starting to try to save a bit of money for the gifts.
By mid november we have still bought nothing and saved little to no money but we are starting to get anxious. We put up decorations and lights which is harder than we remember and costs more because most of the lights and decorations are broken.
By December 1st we are in debt and have maybe a quarter of the gifts purchased. We are very stressed. We are too busy finishing up end of year stuff at work, going to work christmas parties, and making a schedual for out holiday "break" to do any shopping until the last week before christmas.
We go shopping 5 of the 7 days before christmas and get gifts for everyone on the list. Most of the gifts are not really great gifts so we overspend our budget by 30% hoping that the expensiveness makes up for the lack of inspiration. We go to 2-5 family dinners with way too much food. We get a bunch of mediocre gifts that we don't want or need and maybe like one or two really thoughtful gifts that we were thinking of getting for ourselves on a boxing day sale.
3 times in the week after christmas we go return the gifts we got that we wont use and end up buying a bunch of things that we were hoping we'd get as gifts. This adds more debt meaning we will be paying it off till may.
Associating the patron saint of pirates who once beat a political and religious rival so badly that the man shit out his guts and died with being jolly and giving kids presents.
We're Australian, so most of them, but goon (cask wine) of fortune comes to mind.
Otherwise fairly standard, go to a beach away from the tourist ones, bbq, pressies, zooper dooper ice blocks. General states of drunkeness.
eat too much food, get drunk, and watch die hard
People don horse skulls and white sheets and go door to door to engage in musical combat with the occupants - if the occupants relent the horse comes in for food and drink.
Having the main Christmas celebrations the night before Christmas and spending Christmas day relaxing while constipated and slightly hungover.
Making offerings of porridge with butter on top to minor pagan household spirits that lives in the attic. These pagan spirits are far more popular as Christmas ornaments than Christian symbols.
Dancing around the Christmas tree while singing a mixture of hymns and secular Christmas songs, then dancing through every room in the house while singing a nonsensical song about Christmas lasting until Easter.
Drinking mulled wine with raisins and chopped almonds. Often spherical pancakes are served with this.
Hmm, nothing too weird... my ethnic culture technically recognizes the Christmas season at the start of September, and in those last 9 days before Christmas, we have a novena, essentially a series of masses that lasts 9 days...
Oh and we also eat rice cakes w/ margarine...
What's more christmassy than getting into a rap battle with a person wearing a horse skull as a mask.
Sadly no Mari Lwyd's in my area this year. :(
We party on the 9 days leading up to Christmas, each day theming the party around a different virtue (kindness, humility, strength... I forget the rest). There's also a piñata that you beat up to symbolize umm, banishing sin? And you pass along a baby Jesus between families too. I don't know all the specifics because we don't party in the US like they do in Mexico 😔
Not mine, but I went to the netherlands about 10 years ago around christmas time and boy is their version whack. For some reason their santa dresses like the pope and comes to the netherlands on a steam boat from Spain. Then there's his pet slave who kidnaps children....
The only thing the Dutch got right about christmas is a tradition of spending boxing day in bed reading a book.
We have two Christmas Days, on December 25 and 26. For people in relationships that usually means one day celebrating with your parents, and the other with your inlaws. Lately a lot of people have started observing an unofficial third Christmas Day on the 27th to celebrate with friends.
We all go to the local Drive-In movie theater and watch a Gruesome Twosome Christmas double feature: Passion of the Christ followed by Life of Brian. The irony being that these are Easter movies.
Just kidding.
CommieJones pretty much nailed what
"culture" does on Christmas (even if they are not American) so I refer you to their post.Every single Christmas since forever Polsat airs Home Alone around 8pm. Same will be today.
Half of the country eats Bratwurst (or some other kind of wurst) with Sourkraut and potato salad for dinner on the 24th.
This is a fact and entirely not made up.
Dancing around a tree we've decorated while singing songs about how we're going to eat it (okay just one song, other songd are about other stuff).
Competitively eating a form of rice porridge mixed with whipped cream and almonds, until one of us gets a whole almond and they get a present.
One of the elders of the family will abandon us in the night, only to don a garment of mixed red-and-white fabrics, stuff their pants and belly with hay or cloth so as to simulate obesity, wear a fake beard and then return claiming to be a man called "Santa Claus". They will then go to each child in the den and interrogate them on their behaviour for the year. If the child is deemed worthy then it is handed a preset. If not it will be handed coal and scolded for all to see.
And then there's the Thor-feud ofc
Only tangentially related to being a Christmas tradition, but the weirdest thing I grew up with was Knut. 20 days after Christmas you’re supposed to take down all Christmas decorations, and this coincides with children dressing up as old men to beg for treats.
There were other regional variants of this as well. But it was very much a hyperlocal event that is as close to doxing myself as I’m going to get here.
a bunch of the christmas movie "classics" are absolute garbage, but i watch them anyway because its too much energy to hate on them too on top of the rest of the shit in the world
I'm Polish-American, so we break bread, specifically these church wafers called pwatki(sp?). Also around that time and New Years, there's the tradition of "Cannibal Sandwiches". Despite making plans of being pescatarian in 2 years, I will be enjoying some raw beef on rye this year.
Monitoring this thread for blackface Santa
