The 9 weirdest Christmas traditions around the world, from pooping logs to mouldy potatoes

Who are we – who is anyone – to judge another country’s Christmas customs to be especially bizarre?

The whole modern edifice of Christmas is a bat***t crazy mish-mash of Christian and pagan traditions, along with the usual commercial imperatives.

He who can spin a coherent yarn out of a jolly fat man, decorated pine trees, flying reindeer, and the figurehead of a major world religion, can cast the first pudding.

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Even so, some of these Christmas traditions will seem more than a little odd to almost everyone else in the world. Each of these bizarre rituals is kind of wonderful in its own inexplicable way.

With that, we’re off to roller skate to a giant goat effigy, dressed as a demon, and we might just stop off at KFC on the way...

1. Catalans make a pooping log

If you found South Park’s Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo offensive for its scatological take on the most holy of days, never visit Barcelona in December. On the 8th day of the month, inhabitants of Spain’s fiercely independent easternmost region like to create an anthropomorphised log character, dressing it up in a hat and covering it in a blanket. Over the next two weeks, they will proceed to ‘feed’ said log character on dried fruit and nuts. On Christmas Eve, the entire family will indulge in a game of ‘beating the log’ whilst singing a song encouraging the inanimate object to poop out its stale treats.

2. Japanese eat KFC

Imagine what a wealthy non-Christian country, known for its love of ceremonies and its taste for the finer things in life, would do with Christmas. In the event, Japan’s late 20th century embrace was suitably idiosyncratic. The country that brought us sushi and kaiseki celebrates Christmas Day with... a KFC bucket. That’s right, Kentucky Fried Chicken. And no, their version isn’t any posher than ours. The story goes that there wasn’t a whole lot of turkey in Japan in the early ‘70s, so hungry and lonely gaijin would head to KFC for a different form of Western poultry.

3. Austrians dress up as demons

Ah, those cheerful, affluent Austrians with their stunning scenery and beautiful cities. This country at the very heart of Europe surely has to be a paragon of established Christmas customs, right? It was they who established the whole Christmas tree thing, after all. Sure, except that one of their main Christmas traditions is to dress up as a horned goat-demon (representing Krampus, the dark yin to Santa Claus’s yang) and roam the icy streets, rattling chains and whipping people with birch. Yikes.

4. Swedes build a giant goat out of hay

There are a lot of goats in Scandinavian Christmas tradition. Julebukk is the name of both a door-to-door gift-receiving tradition and an ornamental goat whipped out over the festive period. In Sweden, it’s customary for cities to construct large straw ‘yule goats’ out of straw. There’s always one that takes things too far though, and the city of Gävle likes to construct a giant example of this mythical horned creature. It occasionally reaches up to 40 feet in height. Needless to say, it’s not uncommon for these to be subjected to arson attacks. Who doesn’t want a giant flaming goat for Christmas?

5. Venezuelans roller skate to mass

For many Catholic-majority countries, Christmas celebrations flit between the frivolous and the pious. That may well be the case for many Venezuelans, too, but inhabitants of the capital city Caracas like to have it both ways at once. They’ll dutifully make their way to the daily Misa de Aguinaldo church service, but will choose to do so on roller skates. The tradition – for it is just that – is called "Las Patinatas”, and it takes place from December 16th to 24th, during which roads will be closed to allow safe passage for the wheeled throngs.

6. Norwegians hide their brooms

You’ve got to love Norway’s typically cool and practical solution to a totally fantastical situation. Faced with the folkloric idea that Christmas is rife with mischievous witches, our Nordic chums have concluded that they should do something about it. And so on Christmas Eve, before they head off to bed, they will hide all of their brooms. The witches are thus grounded, and the mother of all Christmas Day bust-ups is averted. It’s logical, really.

7. Icelanders place rotten potatoes in kids’ shoes

Most of us will be familiar with the old tradition of giving naughty kids a lump of coal for Christmas. Those hip Icelanders do something a little... starchier. The remote island nation’s youths will leave a shoe on their window sill when they go to sleep in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Well-behaved kids will wake up to a Nike Air Max/rugged snow boot filled with treats, supplied by 13 mystical ‘Yule Lads’. Bratty types, on the other hand, can expect to find a rotten potato spoiling their boxfresh kicks.

8. Italians watch the skies for a kindly witch

Down in Italy, Santa Claus isn’t the only philanthropic mythical figure flying around the night sky. While Babbo Natale (the Italian name for Father Christmas) has the late December shift covered, our pasta-loving cousins have employed La Befana to do something similar early in the New Year. This dirty but well-meaning witch scoots around on her broomstick (as is the witch’s prerogative) dispensing gifts on January 5th, also known as Epiphany Eve. We know how you’re feeling. It’s a bit like when Brits discover that the Scottish get an extra Bank Holiday

9. Philippines Christmas goes on and on

If Wizzard wish it could be Christmas every day, then our advice to the ’70s English rockers would be to move to the Phillipines. We might not be talking about a full 365 day festive period in the South East Asian country, but the Christmas observances do kick off as early as September over there, and can then run into mid-January. That’s officially the longest Christmas in the world. You can thank the country’s strong Catholic faith for that, as well as an intense cultural focus on families reuniting, often involving members returning from abroad.

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