The Christmas season is the best of times for many families. We all have our annual traditions that we celebrate year after year- Christmas trees, the stockings hung by the chimney with care, presents, sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall, and so on. While some of the traditions are shared world wide, there are other traditions that are so bizarre they’re almost hard to believe.

KFC for Christmas

For most people, a typical Christmas dinner would consist of something like ham or a turkey at home or a fancy meal at a local restaurant, but not in Japan. In Japan, Christmas equals Kentucky Fried Chicken. Around 3.6 million Japanese households eat KFC for their Christmas Eve feast. The tradition is so popular that every KFC in the country has a line out the door and people make reservations as early as October. Restaurants like McDonald’s have tried to compete with KFC by offering a Christmas menu, but inevitably, they have failed because no one was willing to break their crazy tradition. Here’s to a “Finger Lickin’ Good” Christmas tradition.

The Christmas Devil

On December 5th in Germany, nice children await St. Nicholas to bring them presents, while naughty children spend this day in fear of the infamous Krampus. Krampus is a half-goat, half-demon, beast who beats children into being good. While the legend originated in Germany, Krampus night is also celebrated in Austria and other parts of Europe. On Krampus night, people dress as Krampus and march around scaring children.

Catalonia Crap

Catalonia, a region in Spain, probably has two of the strangest Christmas traditions of them all, both of which involve poop. The first, is a special appearance of the “Caganer” to the traditional nativity scene. Essentially, the “Caganer” is a man or woman with their pants down, exposed buttocks, and a small lump of poop squirting out onto the floor. The pooping character has been added to the nativity scene for the past two centuries, but most people “don’t know why they do it, it’s just a tradition.”

Another stinky tradition that the Catalonians practice is the whacking of the festive poop log. Tío de Nadal (poop log) is a hollow log with stick legs, a smiley face, and a floppy red hat. The log is brought out on December 8th, and every night until Christmas eve children “feed” the poop log and make sure he’s warm and comfortable. On December 24th the children sing a song to the log, look under the blanket and find that the log has “pooped” presents and candy for them. After everyone receives their presents, the log is burned in the fire.

Rolling into Christmas

In Caracas, Venezuela, it is tradition that the entire city roller skates to early morning Christmas mass. The night before, children tie their skates to their big toes and hang them out the window, then in the morning passing skaters give them a friendly tug.  So many people participate in this tradition that the roads are closed and reserved for roller skaters only.

What’s the Dill?

The Christmas pickle is a small, glass pickle ornament that is secretly hung on the Christmas tree on Christmas eve. In the morning, the first child to find it gets a surprise. Hanging a pickle on your Christmas tree is weird, but what’s even weirder about this tradition is that no one knows where it originated.