1. Parrandas

cubaabsolutely.com

Every year on Christmas Eve the city of Remedios in Cuba becomes the site of Parrandas, a religious carnival that began 200 years ago when a priest sent altar boys into the street banging on pots and pans to keep people awake for midnight mass..

2. La Befana

Every year in Italy during the festival of Epiphany an old witch known as “La Befana” walks through the village streets giving gifts to children.

3. Skating and Toe Tags

If you ever happen to be in Caracas, Venezuela early on Christmas morning you will find the streets closed to traffic as hundreds of people roller skate to mass. Sometimes kids will even tie a piece of rope to one of their toes and let it dangle out the window as they go to sleep the night before. On their way to church the next morning, skaters will tug at any rope they see hanging down from a window and the children will wake up to watch the spectacle.

4. Bavarian Mortars

diether endlicher/ap

In acknowledgement of the Christmas Holidays, Bavarian Highlanders fire handheld mortars into the air every year while wearing their traditional dress.

5. Papa Noel

jaqueline larma/ap

In southern Louisiana massive bonfires are burned every Christmas Eve to light up the river so that Papa Noel (the south Louisiana Santa Claus) can find their houses.

6. Spider Webs

In the Ukraine, Christmas trees have an extra decoration. Legend has it that a mother was so poor she couldn’t afford decorations for her tree. When she woke up on Christmas morning she found that spiders had decorated for her. For this reason, every Christmas Ukrainians add spider webs to their tennenbaums.

7. Serpentine Lake

alessia pierdomenico/reuters

Every December a group of competitors congregates on the shore of Serpentine Lake in London as they get ready to take part in a 100 yard race through the freezing water.

8. Christmas Pudding

Tradition has it that whoever is making the Christmas pudding in England should make a wish as they stir clockwise thus ensuring that their wish will come true.

9. Shoe Throwing

Christmas Eve in the Czech Republic is supposedly a single lady’s chance to find out what her future holds. Standing outside her front door if she throws a shoe over her shoulder and it lands with the toes pointing towards the door she’ll be married within the year.

10. Bondi Beach

amazingtourismtraveling.com

For those of you living in the northern hemisphere (most of you probably) remember that seasons work differently south of the equator. In the land down under going to the beach on Christmas is quite normal.

11. Broom Stealers

If you want to be able to clean up after the holidays in Norway you had better hide your brooms on Christmas Eve otherwise broom stealing witches might come to your house…and steal your brooms.

12. Tio de Nadal

In one of the stranger traditions on our list, every year on December 8th in Catalonia, children begin to feed a log that the family keeps in their home. Sounds crazy right? But that’s not all. They also cover it up so it doesn’t get cold and then, on Christmas Eve, all the children begin beating the log so that it will poop out their presents. Who could make this stuff up?

13. Ceiling Food

In Slovakia, there is a curious tradition where the patriarch of the family fills his spoon with loksa, a type of pudding, and flings it at the ceiling. The more he can get to stick up there the better his harvest will be for the next year.

14. KFC

A testament to KFC’s marketing team, they somehow managed to get the entire country of Japan to consider their chicken a holiday staple. It has become so popular in fact, that people sometimes have to reserve their buckets months in advance.

15. Gävle Goat

heraldsun.com.au

Every year in the town of Gävle, Sweden since 1966 a huge goat has been constructed out of straw and every year groups of vandals have made an attempt to burn it down. Over the past half-century it has actually only survived 10 times and while the event has brought the village of Gävle a certain amount of fame the official stance of the town is that it disapproves of the burnings. Only 4 people, however, have been caught and prosecuted in the past 50 years.