Weird Christmas Traditions Around the World

By Noah Eck

Take a step back and really look at some of the traditions surrounding Christmas that we have here in America, they’re pretty strange. We cut down trees and keep them in our house, children look forward to a large elderly man falling down their chimney to give them presents, and fruit cake… enough said. With that in mind, I decided to research some strange traditions from around the globe that I found pretty interesting.

Ukraine
In Ukraine, instead of decorating their Christmas trees with lights and ornaments, they decorate it with a fake spider and spider web. The reason they do this is because of an old tale where a poor woman couldn’t afford to decorate her tree. When she woke up the next morning, a spider had covered her tree with a glittering web. If you’re afraid of spiders, you should be happy you don’t live in Ukraine.

Iceland
I don’t know anybody with a phobia of giant, man eating cats but if you do, tell them to stay away from Iceland. The legend goes, back in medieval times farmers wanted to motivate their workers to finish processing the autumn wool before Christmas. To do so they made up the tale of the Yule Cat. The Yule Cat would lurk in the snow and attack workers who didn’t finish their job while the other workers were rewarded with new clothes.

Germany
This tradition is pretty similar to stockings in America, but it seemed worth noting. On December 5th in Germany, children will leave a shoe outside their house. The good kid’s shoes are filled with sweets while the naughty kids are given… a tree branch. Now I don’t know what’s worse, eating candy out of a shoe or getting a tree branch but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.

Slovakia
This is by far the messiest Christmas tradition I’ve seen. In Slovakia it’s tradition for the man of the house to take a spoonful of loksa (aka. pudding) and hurl it at the ceiling. The more pudding that sticks to the ceiling, the better your luck for an entire year. I kind of wish we could replace fruit cake here in America with the hurling of Christmas pudding but that’s just me.

Czech Republic
In the Czech Republic, unmarried women will stand near a door and throw a shoe over their shoulder. If the shoe is pointing towards the door when it lands, then they will get married within the next year. Nothing says Christmas like throwing a shoe over your shoulder in hopes of getting married.

Bavaria, Germany
Many years ago the people of Bavaria wanted to drive away the cold winter and awaken nature by creating loud noises. They used items such as whips, chains, and bells to make as much noise as possible. Fast forward to 2017, grab your lederhosens and replace chains and bells with guns and mortars and you have arguably the manliest Christmas tradition in the world.

Those are just a few weird Christmas traditions from around the world that I found interesting although there are hundreds more out there. Be sure to subscribe to odcspress.org for more news around the school along with more Christmas content and as always, have a merry Christmas.