The world’s most weird and wonderful Christmas traditions

During the beating, families often sing a song like this to encourage the log: “Poo log, poo nougat, hazelnuts and mató cheese, if you don’t poo well, I’ll hit you with a stick, poo log!”

Adults may also opt for the custom of wearing red underwear over the festive season, and particularly New Year’s Eve. It’s “the only sure-fire way of Cupid shooting an arrow in your direction” in the new year, according to Spanish English news site, The Local. Yet in the small Spanish town of Font de la Figuera, people take the celebration a step further by running around in their crimson skivvies in the freezing cold, much to the alarm of unsuspecting visitors.

Belarus: rooster rules

Christmas is a time for singletons to have their fortunes told by a rooster in the former Soviet state of Belarus. Traditionally, every festive season, the single women of a town have grains of corn laid out in front of them and a rooster from a nearby farm is placed among them. Whoever’s corn is eaten first will be the next one to get married.

In another strange tradition aimed at keeping spinsters occupied, married women also lord it over their unattached friends by hiding items around their house for them to hunt, imploring the singletons to search high and low. If they find bread, they’re destined to marry a rich man, a ring means they’re in line to marry a handsome man – assuming the married women haven’t snapped up all the wealthiest and most attractive men in town.

US: a pickle mystery

Many American Christmas customs are familiar across much of the English-speaking world – turkey, carols, presents under the tree. But one custom is likely to be alien to most – the Christmas pickle. In parts of the Midwest, it is common for families to hang a glass pickle-shaped ornament among the decorations on their Christmas tree and then invite their children to search for it. The first to spot the Christmas pickle will get good luck for the rest of the year, or sometimes an extra present.

Many Americans believe the Christmas pickle to be a venerable old-world custom brought over by German immigrants, with some even calling it by the German name, weihnachtsgurke. But the tradition’s origins are actually “a bit of a, well, pickle”, said Country Living. A 2016 YouGov survey found 91% of Germans had never heard of the tradition. One theory suggests the German link was invented by 19th-century department stores to sell more glass baubles.

Syria: camel caravan

Syria’s sizeable Christian minority has its own local legend about the Nativity. Christmas presents are delivered not by Father Christmas on his sleigh, but by the “smallest camel to have traveled with the Three Wise Kings”, said Arab America. Instead of a carrot for Rudolph, children leave water and hay outside their homes for the hard-working camel, who delivers his load on New Year’s Eve rather than Christmas Eve.

Greenland: eating mouldy birds and whale blubber

Considered a treat by Greenland’s Inuits, kiviak is a dish made from small birds called auks, which are wrapped up in seal skin, then buried and left for months to ferment, before being eaten once fully decomposed.

Another seasonal dish enjoyed in Inuit communities is muktuk, which is made from the skin and blubber of a whale. Usually sliced thin, sprinkled with salt and eaten raw, muktuk is said by some to taste like fresh coconut, while others compare the flavour to fried eggs.

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/56597/the-strangest-christmas-customs-from-around-the-world