askchapo

some of the fucking freaks here actually like eggnog

Australia has BBQ prawns at Xmas, weird huh?

Also, I agree, bring back the Scandinavian Xmas duendes

My father said that when he was a kid in Sicily, they would have a witch deliver presents around this time of year. We don't really practice it here but, many Americans can't believe it when you first tell them.

Other than that, pannatone, which has become Americanized with the addition of chocolate chips.

chinese food and a movie

Nothing particularly weird comes to mind--only thing notable is that it's common in Latin America to stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve to open presents.

Not my culture, but it tickles me that where Christmas is associated with family in most of the world, in Japan (where only ~1% of the population is Christian) it's associated with couples. More pointedly, there's a common pun on the word for Christmas Eve (聖夜 seiya, lit. "holy night") which swaps the character for "holy" with the homophonous 性 (sei, "sex") because it's the #1 night for couples to bang--even more so than Valentine's Day.

You gotta leave grass and water out for the three king's camels.

It’s a tie between the Nativity scene shitter and the Yule log you beat with a stick until it shits candy.

Associating the patron saint of pirates who once beat a political and religious rival so badly that the man shit out his guts and died with being jolly and giving kids presents.

Summer Christmas and Dezemba (slang for December holidays, it's the longest holiday break) parties everywhere. Pool parties, lots of braais/grilling/BBQ, party music and atmosphere everywhere. Lots of drinking.

Big fish in bathtubs, you are supposed to pamper them, give them daily massages, and then eat them (some people just release them now). The water must be super clean, our rivers are kinda muddy so the idea is to make the fish feel clean for the first time.

This is how my culture does christmas: We start thinking about christmas in mid September. We make lists of all the people we have to buy gifts for and try to decide what to get them as well as starting to try to save a bit of money for the gifts.

By mid november we have still bought nothing and saved little to no money but we are starting to get anxious. We put up decorations and lights which is harder than we remember and costs more because most of the lights and decorations are broken.

By December 1st we are in debt and have maybe a quarter of the gifts purchased. We are very stressed. We are too busy finishing up end of year stuff at work, going to work christmas parties, and making a schedual for out holiday "break" to do any shopping until the last week before christmas.

We go shopping 5 of the 7 days before christmas and get gifts for everyone on the list. Most of the gifts are not really great gifts so we overspend our budget by 30% hoping that the expensiveness makes up for the lack of inspiration. We go to 2-5 family dinners with way too much food. We get a bunch of mediocre gifts that we don't want or need and maybe like one or two really thoughtful gifts that we were thinking of getting for ourselves on a boxing day sale.

3 times in the week after christmas we go return the gifts we got that we wont use and end up buying a bunch of things that we were hoping we'd get as gifts. This adds more debt meaning we will be paying it off till may.

We're Australian, so most of them, but goon (cask wine) of fortune comes to mind.

Otherwise fairly standard, go to a beach away from the tourist ones, bbq, pressies, zooper dooper ice blocks. General states of drunkeness.

eat too much food, get drunk, and watch die hard

Having the main Christmas celebrations the night before Christmas and spending Christmas day relaxing while constipated and slightly hungover.

Making offerings of porridge with butter on top to minor pagan household spirits that lives in the attic. These pagan spirits are far more popular as Christmas ornaments than Christian symbols.

Dancing around the Christmas tree while singing a mixture of hymns and secular Christmas songs, then dancing through every room in the house while singing a nonsensical song about Christmas lasting until Easter.

Drinking mulled wine with raisins and chopped almonds. Often spherical pancakes are served with this.

Mari Lwyd

People don horse skulls and white sheets and go door to door to engage in musical combat with the occupants - if the occupants relent the horse comes in for food and drink.

For some reason people keep adding raisins to rice during this time of the year. There's going to be raisins in the rice and/or the farofa, guaranteed. A lot of people hate that, to the point where hating rice with raisins is kind of a meme

Hmm, nothing too weird... my ethnic culture technically recognizes the Christmas season at the start of September, and in those last 9 days before Christmas, we have a novena, essentially a series of masses that lasts 9 days...

Oh and we also eat rice cakes w/ margarine...

Not mine, but I went to the netherlands about 10 years ago around christmas time and boy is their version whack. For some reason their santa dresses like the pope and comes to the netherlands on a steam boat from Spain. Then there's his pet slave who kidnaps children....

The only thing the Dutch got right about christmas is a tradition of spending boxing day in bed reading a book.

Mari Lwyd

What's more christmassy than getting into a rap battle with a person wearing a horse skull as a mask.

Sadly no Mari Lwyd's in my area this year. :(