This is a post about unique Christmas traditions around the world.
Christmas is a time of joy, giving and, depending where you land on the map, roller skates, pooping logs or a bucket of fried chicken. Being from Brazil, my childhood Christmases were closer to an Australian summer barbecue than anything out of a Hollywood movie. Nothing scandalous, really, apart from celebrating in 40ºC heat. Although my boyfriend was truly stunned the first time he learned that in my house we eat chesters! It’s a very Brazilian, oddly mysterious “super chicken” that doesn’t exist anywhere else. So maybe my “normal” was never that normal to begin with.
It’s a big world though and not everyone celebrates the same way. Obviously, some countries don’t celebrate it at all, since it’s not part of their culture. Others have turned it into something you’d truly plan a trip around. Below are 21 of the most unique Christmas traditions worldwide. From the ones I’ve heard about a hundred times from friends who live there to the full “wait, what?” moments.
Quick Guide: Christmas Traditions Around the World
🎄 Most food-focused: Japan (KFC), Poland (12-dish Wigilia), Greenland (fermented seabird)
🎃 Spookiest: Austria and Germany’s Krampus, Iceland’s Yule Cat, Italy’s Befana
🛼 Most fun to watch: Venezuela’s roller-skating mass
📺 Most oddly wholesome: Sweden’s Donald Duck broadcast, Finland’s candlelit cemeteries
🗓️ When most of these happen: 5 December to 6 January (Sinterklaas to Epiphany)
✈️ Want to see one in person? Booking.com for winter breaks timed around the festive calendar
Venezuela: Roller Skate to Church
In Caracas, streets are closed on Christmas morning so people can roller skate to early mass. The tradition is called Misa de Aguinaldo and it’s followed by fireworks and lively street celebrations. Their holiday season falls in summer too, which honestly just makes the whole thing sound better.
Austria and Germany: Krampus Night
This one isn’t fun so much as unsettling. Austria and Germany mark Saint Nicholas Day with a frightening twist: Krampus, a half-goat, half-demon creature, roams the streets on 5 December, punishing naughty children while St Nick rewards the good ones. Each December there are now organised “Krampus Runs”, where people dress as the creature and chase crowds through town squares, part folk tradition, part full-blown street festival.
Krampus made headlines recently for the wrong reasons though. It was reported that on a German island, men were literally chasing women and spanking them with a cow horn as part of a related folk custom. In 2024!!
Though, to be honest, when I lived in Germany as an au pair, I did’t see Krampus. We celebrated Saint Nicholas Day in a much more wholesome way: leaving our shoes outside overnight to find gifts the morning after. It’s usually a thing for kids but my lovely host family did it for me too!
PLANNING A TRIP TO GERMANY? READ THIS: Top 10 Best Cities to Visit in Germany
South Africa: Fried Caterpillars
Some South Africans eat deep-fried Emperor Moth caterpillars, known locally as mopane worms, as a Christmas delicacy. They’re not actually harvested for the holiday specifically, they’re simply in season around December, squeezed clean, sun-dried and then fried or stewed with onion and tomato. The taste is often described as faintly like tea and they’re a real source of protein in parts of southern Africa, not just a novelty dish.
Japan: Fried Chicken Feast
Christmas isn’t a traditional holiday in Japan, but thanks to a wildly successful KFC marketing campaign in the 1970s, it’s now customary to eat fried chicken on 25 December. Families pre-order buckets of KFC weeks in advance to avoid missing out and the queues on the day are real.
I could absolutely get on board with this one, a tastier option than moth caterpillars, at least. This Christmas I’ll be dogsitting instead of visiting family and I always enjoy mixing traditions together, so I might just fold this one into the day.
Philippines: Giant Lantern Festival
The city of San Fernando hosts the Giant Lantern Festival, a showcase of enormous, colourful lanterns that’s earned the city the nickname “Christmas Capital of the Philippines.” It runs from 14 December to 1 January and draws visitors from all over the world. The Philippines also holds the record for the longest Christmas season on the planet: decorations and Christmas songs on the radio start as early as September and don’t let up until January.
Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras: Las Posadas
From 16 to 24 December, several Latin American countries reenact Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter in a nine-day celebration called Las Posadas, one night for each month of Mary’s pregnancy. Each evening, a procession carrying figures of Mary and Joseph goes door to door asking for lodging, is turned away at the first few houses and is finally welcomed in for prayers, food and music. The final night usually ends with a piñata, traditionally shaped like a seven-pointed star representing the seven deadly sins, broken open by the children.
Poland: Wigilia and the Empty Chair
Wigilia is Poland’s Christmas Eve supper and it’s built almost entirely around symbolism. Exactly twelve meat-free dishes are served, one for each apostle (or, depending who you ask, one for each month of the year) and diners are expected to at least taste every single one for luck in the year ahead. The meal traditionally doesn’t start until the first star appears in the sky.
The detail I find moving is the empty chair, left at the table for an unexpected guest, a lonely neighbour, or a remembrance of someone who’s passed.
Sweden: The Donald Duck Broadcast
Every year since 1959, at exactly 3pm on Christmas Eve, roughly 40% of Sweden sits down to watch the same hour-long Disney special, Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul (“Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas”). It’s been broadcast, largely unchanged, on the same public channel at the same time for over six decades and it is consistently one of the most-watched programmes of the entire year in Sweden. When the network tried swapping out a segment in 1982, there was enough public backlash that they reversed it the following year.
It’s the kind of tradition that sounds maybe childish on paper but is lovely in practice: an entire country pausing, together, at the same time, for the same slightly battered old cartoon.
Iceland: The Yule Lads and others
Icelandic children are visited by the thirteen mischievous Yule Lads over the thirteen nights leading up to Christmas, each one leaving either a small gift or a rotting potato in a shoe by the window depending on behaviour. If that weren’t enough, Iceland also created the Yule Cat, a huge, vicious creature said to roam the snowy countryside EATING anyone who hasn’t received new clothes before Christmas Eve. Properly unsettling stuff for a bedtime story.
My favourite Icelandic tradition by far, and one I’ve half adopted myself over the past few years, is Jólabókaflóðið, the “Christmas book flood.” On Christmas Eve, friends and family exchange books as gifts, then spend the night reading them, usually with hot chocolate or alcohol-free Christmas ale close by. If Iceland’s folklore has you wanting to see it for yourself, I’ve got a guide to Iceland here and a more specific guide to Reykjavik (where I did see a Yule Cat when I visited a couple of weeks before Christmas!).
PLAN A TRIP TO ICELAND: Top Things to Do in Iceland: an Easy Guide for First Time Visitors
Germany: The Pickle Ornament
Germans supposedly hide a pickle-shaped ornament somewhere on the Christmas tree and the first child to spot it on Christmas morning gets a special gift. Except, as far as I can tell, this isn’t actually German at all. I don’t remember it coming up once during my Christmas in Germany as an au pair, so I asked friends who are German or have lived there for some time and none of them had heard of it either. Some digging suggests it, like German Chocolate Cake, was actually invented in the US and pinned on Germany for reasons nobody can quite explain. In Brazil we have both German and Dutch tarts that don’t exist in their supposed home countries either, so I’ll allow it, they’re delicious. If you want the real German Christmas experience, markets and all, my Munich Travel Guide is a good place to start planning.
Netherlands: Sinterklaas and the Carrot in the Shoe
Sinterklaas arrives by steamboat from Spain in mid-November and is celebrated properly on 5 December, known as pakjesavond. In the run-up, children leave a shoe by the fireplace with a carrot or hay tucked inside for Sinterklaas’s horse, then sing a Sinterklaas song loudly enough, allegedly, to be heard from the rooftop. The next morning, the carrot is gone and a small gift or chocolate letter, usually the first initial of the child’s name, has appeared in its place.
Norway: Hiding Brooms
Norwegian households hide their brooms on Christmas Eve to stop witches and evil spirits from stealing them for midnight rides, a tradition rooted in old folklore that treats Christmas Eve with almost the same superstition as Halloween, a night when the skies are said to fill with witches and mischievous spirits looking for a way to cause trouble. Personally, I think I’d leave the broom out and take my chances on the ride-along. Would you?
KEEN ON WITCHES AND MAGICAL PLACES? I’VE GOT A BUNCH OF TRAVEL GUIDES FOR THAT! LIKE THESE ONES:
The Most Magical Places in Scotland
The Best Witchy Places to Visit in the UK
Halloween in Europe: 11 of the Spookiest Places to Visit
Ukraine: Spiderweb Ornaments
In Ukraine, spiderwebs are considered lucky Christmas decorations. According to legend, a poor widow couldn’t afford to decorate her family’s tree, so spiders took pity on her and spun it full of webs overnight, which turned to gold and silver by morning. Now families add a spiderweb ornament to the tree on purpose and whoever spots it first is said to be the lucky one for the year.
Czech Republic: The Shoe-Throwing Prophecy
On Christmas Day, single Czech women stand with their backs to the front door, toss a shoe over their shoulder and turn to see how it lands. If the toe points toward the door, marriage is supposedly on its way within the year. If the heel lands facing the door, it’s another year of staying single. It sits alongside a whole set of Czech Christmas fortune-telling customs, including pouring melted lead into water and reading the shapes it makes or slicing an open apple to check whether the core forms a star (good luck) or a cross (a warning to be careful in the year ahead).
Italy: Befana the Witch
I don’t know what it is about Christmas traditions and witches, but I’m into it. In Italy, Befana, an old witch, delivers presents to children on 6 January, Epiphany Eve. Legend says she missed the birth of Jesus and has been searching for him ever since. And people have the nerve to call witches evil! If witchy folklore is your thing beyond Italy, I’ve also written about the Best Witchy Places to Visit in the UK.
Finland: Grave Visits
On Christmas Eve, Finnish families light candles and visit the graves of loved ones. Cemeteries glow with thousands of flickering candles, creating something closer to a spiritual vibe than a sombre one. Many families also take a Christmas sauna together before dinner, considered one of the most restorative parts of the whole day, quiet, warm and about as far from a frantic present-wrapping evening as it’s possible to get.
Spain (Catalonia): Caga Tió (The Pooping Log)
Of everything on this list, this is the one that makes people do a double take. In Catalonia, children care for a hollow log called Caga Tió, complete with a painted-on face and little legs, in the run-up to Christmas. On Christmas Eve, kids hit the log with sticks while singing a specific song, encouraging it to “poop” out sweets and small gifts. What happened to a good old-fashioned piñata?
France: Foie Gras and the Réveillon Feast
Christmas Eve dinner in France, known as le réveillon de Nöel, is a long, multi-course affair and foie gras is very often the centrepiece starter. It’s considered a real luxury food here rather than a novelty and families will often save up for the good stuff specifically for this one meal of the year.
Greenland: Unusual Dishes
Christmas dinner in Greenland might include kiviak (fermented seabird, traditionally hundreds of little auks stuffed inside a seal skin and left to ferment for months) or mattak (whale skin with blubber), both firmly rooted in Arctic survival traditions rather than novelty cooking. I’m not sure either is for me, but I would go to Greenland in a heartbeat for the scenery alone. If you’ve seen the Danish series Borgen, the later season dealing with Denmark and Greenland’s relationship is worth a watch and the icy landscapes alone make me want to book a flight.
New Zealand: The Pōhutukawa “Christmas Tree”
Since Christmas falls in the middle of the New Zealand summer, the country has adopted its own natural Christmas tree entirely: the pōhutukawa, a native coastal tree that bursts into brilliant red flowers right around late December. It’s become such a fixture of the season that it’s earned the nickname “New Zealand’s Christmas tree” without a single bauble in sight.
Australia: Christmas BBQ and Surfing Santa
As in New Zealand and Brazil, Christmas in Australia falls in the middle of summer. Aussies typically celebrate with seafood barbecues, actual surfing, pavlova for a refreshing dessert and cricket matches for anyone feeling sporty.
Final Thoughts
Christmas traditions vary wildly and that’s kind of the whole point. Whether it’s fried chicken in Japan, roller skating in Venezuela or a pooping log in Catalonia, these customs are a reminder that “the festive spirit” means something completely different depending on where you’re standing.
Do you have any particularly “non-conventional” Christmas tradition? I’d love to hear! Let me know in the comments =)
FAQ: Unique Christmas Traditions Around the World
It depends who you ask, but Catalonia’s Caga Tió (the “pooping log” that children hit with sticks to release sweets) and Iceland’s Yule Cat (a beast said to eat anyone without new clothes by Christmas Eve) are consistently the two that surprise people most.
Christmas isn’t a traditional Japanese holiday, but a highly successful KFC marketing campaign in the 1970s turned fried chicken into the de facto Christmas meal, with families now pre-ordering buckets weeks in advance.
Caga Tió is a hollow log with a painted face, cared for by children in Catalonia, Spain, throughout December. On Christmas Eve, it’s hit with sticks while singing a specific song, and “poops” out small gifts and sweets.
Krampus is a half-goat, half-demon figure from Austrian and German folklore who accompanies Saint Nicholas on 5 December, punishing badly-behaved children while St Nick rewards the well-behaved.
No. Many Orthodox Christian countries celebrate on or around 7 January and several cultures mark the season with entirely different customs or don’t observe it at all. Different religions have different beliefs.
The Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn) is a giant, ferocious cat from Icelandic folklore said to eat anyone who hasn’t received a new piece of clothing before Christmas Eve, a tradition originally meant to encourage hard work and finished chores before winter.
Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and other Southern Hemisphere countries celebrate Christmas during their summer, often with barbecues, beach days and outdoor celebrations rather than snow.
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This was a post about unique Christmas traditions around the world.
