The Atlas Obscura Guide to the World's Strangest Christmas Traditions

Every European Christmas market sells the same mulled wine out of the same wooden hut. This is not a criticism — it is a very good hut, and the wine is warm. But it is not a reason to choose one country over another, and the "best Christmas markets" lists that dominate December travel writing are, functionally, lists of interchangeable huts. The traditions are the opposite. They are wildly, specifically local, they happen on fixed dates, and most of them are considerably darker than the season's reputation suggests. Several involve being eaten. What follows is organized by what you actually want to see, with the dates, because these are the rare travel plans where showing up on the wrong day means seeing nothing at all. Krampus, Austria and Bavaria: chased through the street by a demon Krampus is Saint Nicholas's counterpart: the one who deals with the children on the other list. The figure has deep Alpine roots, but its modern shape came from somewhere more specific — Atlas Obscura's account of what Krampus actually is traces it to the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, when Jesuit plays in Bavaria and Tyrol put an impersonated devil on stage alongside St. Nicholas for the first time in European iconography. The Church absorbed an existing local creature and gave it a job. The runs happen on December 5th and 6th , around St. Nicholas Day, across Austria, Bavaria, and South Tyrol. Costumed Krampuses parade through town centres swatting onlookers with switches, which is exactly as alarming as it sounds and is not remotely a performance for tourists. If you can't get to the Alps, go to Milwaukee . The city's German roots run deep, and its annual Krampusnacht — centred on the 19th-century Pabst Brewery district, with a traditional drum and bugle corps leading a mob of a hundred horned figures down the street — is the real thing rather than a themed event. Frau Perchta is the version most lists miss. A Christmas witch who haunts the darkest nights of the year across Central Europe, she appears in some tellings as a woman in white robes and in others as a web-footed crone trailed by the spirits of unbaptised children carrying a pitcher of their mothers' tears. She is sometimes called the female Krampus, though Atlas Obscura's survey of Christmas monsters notes the argument that she is something older — a forgotten goddess who got demoted. And in Poland, Turoń — a biting, dancing bull-beast of winter descended from the aurochs — still tours villages during the season. Iceland: eaten by a cat Iceland has the best Christmas monsters in the world and it is not close. The Yule Cat , or Jólakötturinn, prowls the countryside on Christmas Eve and eats any child not wearing at least one new item of clothing. Atlas Obscura's piece on the Yule Cat makes the case that this is less arbitrary than it sounds: it is an incentive structure, a way of ensuring children earned new clothes through good behaviour before winter. The cat belongs to the witch-giantess Grýla. Grýla's sons are the Yule Lads , thirteen of them, arriving one per night in the thirteen days before Christmas. Atlas Obscura's guide to them is worth reading for the names alone — Sheep Worrier, Spoon Licker, Window Peeper — and for the argument, made by the headmaster of Iceland's Elf School , that their current friendliness is a recent invention and the originals were genuinely terrifying. He also maintains that they are real. They are said to live at Dimmuborgir , a field of jagged black lava stacks and caves near Lake Mývatn in northern Iceland, formed by an eruption around 2,300 years ago. The name means Dark Castles. It has long been associated with hell — one tradition holds it is where Satan landed after being thrown out of Heaven — and it contains a natural rock arch known as The Church. It is also, unsurprisingly, where the black metal band Dimmu Borgir got their name. Go between December 12th and Christmas Eve if you want the Lads. Gävle, Sweden: watch something burn Since