5 Curious Holiday Traditions from Around the World

Traditions are the little repeated acts that help unify a family, a community, or a country. Many of us think of things like starting an Advent calendar, dropping anonymous gifts on doorsteps, or leaving cookies out for Santa Claus. While all these traditions are well and good, we’ve compiled a short list of 5 holiday traditions from around the world that may strike many people as odd.

Japan

via KFC

Many, many Japanese people dine at KFC on Christmas Eve. So many, in fact, that some people advance order their meals as early as October! To make the holiday dining experience even more festive, some locations offer chocolate cakes and sparkling wine along with the original 8-piece bucket. This crispy-fried tradition was born when a 1974 ad campaign titled “Kentucky for Christmas” suggested KFC’s fried chicken makes the ideal holiday meal. This tradition is made even more fascinating when we consider that the vast majority of Japanese people don’t celebrate Christmas. Talk about the power of good advertising!

Greece

While the 12 Days of Christmas in America are an opportunity for gift giving, pre-holiday sales, and other exciting lead-ins to Christmas, they take on a much more frightful tone in Greece.

According to Greek folklore, the kallikantzaros emerges from its underground lair and is able to walk the earth during the 12 Days of Christmas (Dec. 25 – Jan. 5). This nocturnal, goblin-like creature wreaks havoc wherever it goes, so Greek people have a variety of means to deter it. One method is to leave a colander on the porch at night, because the kallikantzaros won’t be able to count all the holes before the sun comes up and it must hide again.

Latvia

via Pinterest

During Ziemassvētki, or Christmas in Latvia, a variety of pagan, religious, and modern traditions culminate in one unique holiday celebration. The strangest, perhaps, is the tradition of mummers. Mummers are people dressed as animals and other more macabre creatures—like the living dead—who travel from door to door offering blessings, encouraging fertility, and scaring away evil spirits. Residents of the home must give treats to the mummers in order for their blessings to take effect.

Guatemala

The tradition of La Quema del Diablo, or “the Burning of the Devil” is uniquely Guatemalan. Since it is believed evil spirits lurk in the dark, dirty corners of the home, the people of Guatemala spend the first week of December sweeping and deep-cleaning. The debris is piled outside the home and topped with an effigy of the devil. On December 7, everyone lights their piles at the same time, sending the devil and his minions away so the people may enjoy the Feast of the Immaculate Conception the following day.

United States

jmehre via Flickr

What began in Philadelphia as 40 people in Santa suits going out for a brew has turned into a national tradition. The Running of the Santas is touted as a charity event officially held in several large cities. Smaller cities and towns across the country conduct their own versions of the tradition, which is ultimately a creative spin on the bar crawl. Featuring live music, games, and of course, copious amounts of booze, the Running of the Santas sends thousands of people dressed as Santa spilling into the streets in the weeks before Christmas.

No matter what traditions you hold dear around the holidays, the important thing is to keep practicing them. The only way for future generations to enjoy these small, repeated acts is for us to keep repeating them. It’s never too late to start a new tradition, either! If any of these traditions (or any of the other 30 listed here) strike your fancy, your only challenge will be convincing your family or friends to join in.

The Story Behind the Christmas Cookie

The first day of December brings with it a variety of seasonal favorites. Houses along the street shimmer with newly-hanged lights, radio stations begin their 24-hour seasonal soundtracks, and people all over the country scour the internet for delicious and different Christmas cookie recipes. While we have found a couple unique cookie lists that we’ll share with you in a minute, we thought it would be fun to first share a little history of the Christmas cookie.

There’s some debate about whether the story begins by accident or on purpose, so we’ll present both theories and let you be the judge. Some historians believe cookies were the likely result of early (we’re talking Neolithic Era) humans spilling grain paste on the rocks around a cooking fire. Talk about a happy accident. Others believe cookies originated as small, tester cakes, put into a hot oven to determine if it was the correct temperature to bake a full-sized cake.

No matter the original origin story, there’s no debate that sweet baked goods have been found at winter solstice festivals and celebrations for thousands of years, predating the holiday we know as Christmas. As with many modern holidays, Christmas formed as a convenient melding of pagan and Christian traditions that occurred around the same time of year. People naturally acknowledged the arrival of winter with the killing of animals that would be a burden on the grain supply through the famine of winter. With an abundance of fresh meat and the flowing of mead that had been set to ferment in the spring, the only thing missing from the party was dessert!

The traditional flavors of Christmas cookies are spicy, nutty, and fruity. These types of ingredients were used in the Middle Ages when cooks prepared celebratory cakes of cinnamon, ginger, pepper, almonds, and dried fruit. It wasn’t until lebkuchen, or gingerbread, made its way from Germany to Queen Elizabeth I that the Christmas cookie began to take shape. At this point in time, Christmas had already eclipsed the solstice as the most popular winter celebration, so it was no surprise when Elizabeth I wished to honor her courtiers with the gift of having her cooks fashion ginger cookies in their likeness. This is how gingerbread men became a Christmas staple.

Soon recipes for cookies were cropping up in cookbooks all over Europe. The Dutch brought the tradition of Christmas cookies with them to America in the early 1600s. While most recipes from the sixteen and seventeen hundreds produce rudimentary, super-crunchy biscuits sprinkled with savory spices, Americans gave them delightfully whimsical names, like plunkets, jumbles, and cry-babies. The recipes for these crunchy confections often warn bakers that the cookies are best enjoyed up to a week after baking, only after the humidity of a cellar has made them more palatable.

It wasn’t until cookie cutters were imported from Germany in the late 1800s that people were able to create cookies in elaborate shapes. The cutters were originally intended to make Christmas ornaments using inedible dough. However, it didn’t take long for people to start pressing them into cookie dough, and the cut-out cookie was formed.

Just as the origin of cookies has more than one possible story, the tradition of putting out cookies for Santa also has more than one starting point. Norse tradition has had people putting out food for Odin’s eight-legged horse, Sleipner, for thousands of years. Some believe the act of leaving cookies for St. Nick is in homage to the generosity of the actual Saint Nicholas, who spent his life helping people and feeding children in need. Still others state that the tradition gained traction during the Great Depression in the United States, when parents sought to teach children the importance of showing gratitude for their gifts, no matter how simple or small.

Christmas cookie swaps have origins dating as far back as WWI, but historians believe the swaps mentioned in literature from that time were more like bake sales today. The true holiday cookie exchange is often attributed to the Erwin Group, a division of the Syracuse Home Bureau, dating back to Syracuse, New York in 1936. If you plan on mixing up your own batch of dough and participating in one of these iconic Christmas cookie traditions, consider bringing your treats in one of our cookie carriers, so they’ll stay safe and presentable on the way. If you’re making bars, we have the perfect bake-and-take solution.

Whether you get together with friends to trade recipes and share humorous stories of your baking mishaps, or if you low-key leave a plate of Oreos for Santa on Christmas Eve, there’s no denying Christmas cookies have become a tasty staple of the holiday season.

To see cookies inspired by (almost) every state in America, click here.

To see a holiday Cookie Calendar featuring 25 unique recipes, click here.