Regional and international Christmas traditions

[Puffinshop]

What Christmas traditions and customs do you have where you live that is specific to your region or country?

I live in Iceland and instead of one Father Christmas / Santa with a magical sleigh who leaves presents in a stocking, we have 13 Yule Lads. They are like trolls who come down from the mountains one by one in the 13 days before Christmas and each one leaves a little present in children's shoes that are left on the windowsill. Or a potato for badly behaved children (like coal in the stocking)!

We also have a Christmas cat who is an enormous monstrous cat with glowing eyes that will eat you if you don't receive any new clothes for Christmas.

I am German and we have Weihnachtsmann (Father Christmas) and the Christkind who bring gifts on Christmas Eve.
The latter was invented by Martin Luther to get away from St. Nikolaus bringing gifts on the 6th December. Ironically nowadays the Weihnachtsmann is more popular in Protestant areas and the Christkind is firmly established in Catholic regions.
DD gets vistis from both as DH and I have different childhood memories .
And St. Nikolaus still brings chocolates and gifts on the 6th December.

In most households we have the Advent wreath and other small decorations but the tree is not decorated until just before Christmas and stays until at least the 6th January

In Germany Nikolaus Tag is the 6th December- children leave their shoe out on the 5th und he fills them with sweets (or traditionally Apples oranges and nuts) sometimes he comes and visits the children with his friend Knecht Ruprecht... Nikolaus gives treats to the good children while Knecht Ruprecht smackes the bad children....

On Christmas Eve the Christkind comes and brings the presents- traditionally while everyone is in church!

@reluctantbrit -Snap! I grew up in the south, very Catholic indeed.

Irish here - Nollaig na mBán / Little Christmas /Women's Christmas

While strictly not at Christmas time, the 6th January was a day where the women of the household who fed and watered everyone over Christmas go on a jaunt with friends - often a day in the city with a fancy afternoon tea and a bit of shopping.

Myself and friends are putting a slightly modern slant on it and going to a fancy restaurant for dinner followed by cocktails and I know other women who do spa days or gin tastings - basically a girlie day/night out.

We set up a revolut vault to chuck €20 into a month during the year so it's all paid for already.

Interesting about the women's Christmas, I never heard of that before! In Ireland do you have the main presents and big meal on the 25th or the 24th?

In Iceland it's 6 pm on the 24th and then you can open your presents and the main meal is that evening. The 25th is more like Boxing Day with chilling out and leftovers and children playing with their new toys. Isn't Germany similar to that?

For reasons lost in family history my Irish maternal family do Christmas Dinner and gifts of the 24th. The rest of the country do the 25th!

We have experienced 3 kings festivals in Mexico and Spain.
Special bread with figurines hidden in it.
Parades, sometimes with real camels.
Lots of sweets.

The Welsh Mari Lwyd horse skull on a stick under a sheet with ribbons on a procession around town singing songs outside people's houses.

I remembered another one - 23rd is Þorláksmessa (St Thorlak's Mess) when it is traditional to boil fermented skate which absolutely stinks and is horrible.

Ptarmigan is a traditional Christmas meat but they are not very big and you have to shoot them yourself and have a licence for that so most people have ham instead.

Oh mass not mess in English!

Is it all across Wales? Is it on Christmas Day or when? Do the horse skulls get put away for next year? Does everyone have a horse skull or is it like each town has a parade? So many questions haha.

South Wales. Just 1 horse with a parade. Traditionally the skull gets buried and dug up for use over Christmas.

I'm in the Catalunya region of Spain.

On 24th most families have a big meal including sopa de galets (giant pasta stuffed with meat, served in broth swimming with morcilla: black pudding). 25th is canelone and prawns.

Presents are delivered by the 3 Kings on the night of 5th January, after a big parade round town with floats and kids dressed as old fashioned goat herders throwing boiled sweets into the crowd - damn they can hurt!

At some point families will do a caga tio 24/25/26th which brings some smaller presents. It's a cheerful log with a beret and a happy face, you keep him warm with a blanket and feed him throughout the month then hit him with a stick while singing a song and he poops presents! Caga = poo.

DH is Basque, but doesn't celebrate anything Basque-esque, he moved away when he was very young. So Catalan traditions aren't connected with either of our upbringings, but we have the Tio for DS, he's bringing a fidget cube, some turron, fuzzy socks and the dvd of Drop Dead Fred this year! Then we celebrate 25th with Father C, we don't bother with Kings.

His mates from school are from many cultures, so there's quite a mix of who does what and when, which is quite nice.

New year's here is pretty big, restaurants full, big family dinners, some fireworks, in bed by 5am!

Its nice that the 6th is celebrated because the whole season of Christmas doesn't just stop on 27th. Schools start back Monday 9th so the holiday is a nice long one.

Here's our Tio.

Excuse the hairy floor - fluffy dog!

@Puffinshop

That all sounds lovely (apart from the stinky fish!) and is it not also Iceland where on 24th December you read a book and have chocolate????

Books and chocolate are normal presents, yes, but I bet that is probably the same in most places that celebrate Christmas. I've seen the meme you're talking about where apparently everyone just disappears all evening to quietly read by themselves but it's not like that at my in-laws anyway. We are more likely to play board games after Christmas dinner and the kids are more likely to be running around overexcited and playing with their cousins and their new stuff. I think Iceland is pretty similar to the UK there, people just do what they enjoy and spend time with their family.

I'm in southern Italy.
The big day is the 24th and you're expected at whoever is hosting's house by mid morning. You eat fried bread things during the morning. In the afternoon you go for a walk through the heaving streets where teenagers are getting pissed and loud music is playing everywhere and your po-faced Stepford SIL winces and says the youth of today is rotten to the core. You have a big Christmas Eve dinner (or a small one if aforementioned SIL is in charge as she doesn't eat, so nobody else gets to) (fish based) and at midnight you all parade through the house with a ceramic baby Jesus carried by the youngest member of the family (who by the time they're 16 is a) pissed b) cringing) while everyone sings a song. Pissed nephew decapitated Baby Jesus 3 years ago (by dropping him and the head went under the sofa) but we managed to superglue his head back on and MIL never found out.
On Christmas Day we all traipse back and eat pasta and some sort of meat and chips.
On Boxing Day we stay at home and have a turkey but they all congregate again and eat "green soup" which is basically all the leftover veg boiled up.
Every year I say I'm renting an Air BnB in the wilds of the UK next year.

@Geamhradh Haha some of that sounds very regional.