Growing up, most us look forward to the holiday season. Getting out our Christmas trees and blowing the dust off of all the decorations we had as kids. We count down the days waiting for Santa’s sleigh to bring down the gifts that we were being good all year to receive. You all remember waiting for Christmas dinner, dying for our bucket of KFC, right? Or, counting down the days until Christmas Eve to destroy our holiday log to eat the delicious treats inside? Well, we are going to bring a list of five peculiar Christmas traditions from around the world. Who knows, maybe after reading these you will add some of these traditions to your family Christmas routine!
1. Caga Tio or Tio de Nadal
Caga Tio is a Catalonian tradition which involves decorating a log with a happy face placed in the center of the family table in the month of December. Counting down the days till Christmas, every night at dinner time, children feed the log delicious little treats. Come the magical day of Christmas, our friendly little log is beaten with sticks until he “poops” out the delicious treats he stores in his belly! Hence the name “Caga” Tio.
2. The Christmas Spider
In Ukraine, traditionally, people decorate their trees with spider webs. This tradition comes from an old Christmas story about a poor family that did not have the money to buy decorations for their tree. On Christmas morning, the family woke up and found there tree was covered in beautiful spiderwebs. It is also believed that if you decorate your tree with spiderwebs you will have good fortune for the rest of the upcoming year.
3. KFC Christmas Dinner
This Christmas tradition became popular in Japan because of a large number of foreigners looking for a whole chicken to celebrate their Christmas dinner with. Unable to find the whole chicken, families turned to KFC to supplement their needs. This has now become a popular tradition in Japan.
4. Pickle in the Christmas Tree
A more modern tradition is the hidden Christmas pickle. When decorating the Christmas tree the last decoration that is added to the tree is a pickle. The first person to find the pickle will receive an extra gift on Christmas morning. This quirky game was once believed to be a German tradition, but not many sources can confirm this
There are a thousand more traditions we could talk about! Here were just a few of the traditions that we found interesting.
If you want to contribute your crazy Christmas stories, click here to share them with us!
Image Credits: Caga Tio image via Pintrest, KFC image via Pintrest, Spider Tree image via Pintrest, Picke Ornament via Pintrest