5 Christmas Traditions Meant to Traumatize Children

Christmas is a wonderful time of overindulging, overdrinking, and eventually ending up in the E.R. with alcohol induced psychosis. But there is also the spending time with your family part, while sharing the same stories over and over again until you want to lock yourself in the basement and cling to your childhood blanket while rocking back and forth and quietly sobbing Why, why, why? . Also, let’s not forget having to play the” I’m so successful card in front of your relatives” while your mother proudly looks at you. Well, at least this is how it happens where I’m from and I enjoy doing it while getting my bad cholesterol high enough to convince my heart is time for it to commit suicide. But other countries like to celebrate Christmas in their own unique way…

Uncle Alberto, would you pass the salt please?

1 – Eating With Your Dead Relatives

In Portugal, Christmas is celebrated just like in any other country, with fun, lots of food, and lots of drinking. Oh, they also invite their dead relatives to dinner. Imagine being a child during Christmas meal and asking your mom why she put extra places at the table. “- Honey, these are the extra seats for our dead relatives”. Oh, I’m sorry, do you find that disturbing? It seems that eating at the same table with the souls of the dead will bring you a great harvest next year.

2- Tió de Nadal (Christmas Log)

We only want the soul of your first born.

It seems that there is a popular tradition in Catalan communities involving a…log. People have to take care of the log before Christmas day; also, the log is called called Caga tió, which translates in something like “shit log”. Some people even draw a face on it, a smiley face to make things creepier than a photograph of broken vintage dolls. The anthropomorphic log is fed every night and covered with a blanket to be warm because you wouldn’t want it to get angry. But this doesn’t happen because people care about the log, no! People are actually feeding the log so that it would be prepared to defecate on Christmas Day. Yes, the log is supposed to produce a gift. Oh, but it gets weirder. On Christmas day the family gathers around the log and starts singing:

"Caga tió,

caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!"

…which means(honestly!):

Shit log,
shit turrón,
hazelnuts and cottage cheese,
if you don't shit well,
I'll hit you with a stick,
shit log!

One member of the family will then have to, uhm, retrieve the gift produced by the log.

Now imagine being a kid and entering your living room on Christmas day to witness your family gathered in a Satanic ritual manner, hitting a piece of wood with sticks while commanding it to defecate. Because singing carols and exchanging gifts is definitely lame.

3 – Mummers Visit 

Mummers - RPGs are for losers.  Source

The members of small communities would disguise themselves and travel from house to house at Christmas. This tradition can be traced back at least to the Middle Ages. They usually symbolize a battle between good and evil. Mummers usually are disguised and they either wear masks or have their face painted with black. Now I won’t discriminate here, there are different rituals like this in probably every country. But for a person who doesn’t have this type of tradition in their country this is as random and bizarre as an encounter with Galactic Crab Man. In Romania, we have The Goat which is basically the same thing. A bunch of people go from house to house dressed in goats. In that video those kids are just groping that goat, but hey, it’s tradition. I remember being a kid, I got a little traumatized when I first saw this and I found it hard to understand why everybody was letting that dragon looking monster inside my house. Was I about to be sacrificed to that abomination? Well, later I learned it was just for good luck.

This is how nightmares are born.

4- Mari Lwyd

What’s worse than people disguised in scary costumes and abstract looking goats? A dead horse. Actually, only the skull, which makes it even weirder if you think about it. This is very similar to The Goat tradition as people go from house to house for good luck. So, after hearing a knock in the cold Christmas night, you will open your door to what it can only be described as a resurrected puppet from a nightmarish show meant to please Satan..and according to that picture, some guy from the realm of dwarfs and magic mushrooms. 

5 – Krampus 

When you thought Christmas couldn't get any better.

Ah Krampus, I saved the best for last. In Germanic tradition people don’t bother disguising themselves as luck bringing animals. No, they prefer taking the form of child eating demons named Krampus. He is Santa’s private bodyguard and follows him while he delivers presents; the legend says that Krampus will kidnap and bring children to his cave where he will devour them if they are naughty and don’t listen to their parents. Young men roam the streets in December dressed as Krampus and scaring children with chains and eerie sounding bells. Now that's an enjoyable way to spend your holidays.