Have Yourself an Offbeat Little Christmas

Do a little digging into global Christmas lore and Santa begins to look a little boring.

This post is dedicated to offbeat Christmas lore and traditions, which are more plentiful than you might expect. That’s a good thing, because they can be pretty interesting. Let’s show you what we mean.

We’ll start with the Yule Lads[1] from Iceland. They aren’t really “lads” at all, in fact, they’re quite aged—13 greybeards in funny red hats, not far removed from the cute-looking gnomes you see in your neighbor’s garden.

But looks can be deceiving and it turns out the Lads are Iceland’s Christmastime Kings of Mischief. They show up every year, one after another, each of the 13 days leading up to December 25.

Individual Lads specialize in their specific brand of mayhem. There’s Stekkjarstaur (Sheep-Cote Clod) who hangs out at farms scaring sheep and stealing their milk. And Hurðaskellir (Door Slammer), who keeps everyone in the house awake, exhausting them by Christmastime. Other lads lick spoons, pots, and pans—respectively—while Kertasníkir (Candle Beggar) steals candles from kids and eats the tallow (yum!)[2].

It’s easy to tell that the Yule Lads come from the same European folk traditions that have given us everything from Santa to the little nine-pin players that slipped that brew to lazy old Rip Van Winkle.

So let’s switch gears and go for something more modern, something, by the way, that likely wouldn’t have occurred without the widespread blurring of global food channels and the need for speed in modern life.

We’re talking about Japan’s tradition of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas.

Japan celebrates Christmas as a secular holiday, and while it is not a national holiday, it has morphed into a casual tradition, a time for friends and families to get together around a bucket of KFC. It’s the result of one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history, and it has become synonymous with the holiday for a half century.

Okay. So that covers Europe and Asia. So what unusual holiday practices originated on U.S. shores?

We present, for your consideration, the Christmas Pickle.

The Christmas Pickle is an ornament (it looks like a pickle!) that is hidden on a tree, the tradition being that the first child in the house to find it gets a prize. People say the Christmas Pickle is of German origin, but they’re confused. Multiple sources attribute it to American ingenuity, namely the chain of F. W. Woolworth stores selling a German-made glass ornament and creating a novelty sensation around it[3].

The Christmas Pickle has not only lasted to the present, it’s thrived. And there is no better place to get a taste of the Christmas Pickle experience than the annual Christmas Pickle Festival, in Berrien Springs, Michigan. It features pickle-themed decorations, crafts, food, and holiday events. It’s far from the only Christmas Pickle Festival in the U.S., believe it or not, but it is the largest.

Here at SSCS, things aren’t really ever offbeat, as we’re pretty much in the regular routine of providing the best software and service to our c-store customers. And because this blog will be taking the Christmas week off, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the customers who’ve made it possible for us to thrive the past 45 years, while extending best wishes to you for the holidays. May you all make Santa’s list, and stay off Krampus’s. Merry Christmas!

[1] Jólasveinar in Icelandic.

[2] Catch up with the rest of the Yule Lads in this article.

[3] Another legend links the pickle to American Civil War soldier John Lower, who supposedly survived starvation in a Confederate prison after begging for a pickle. There is no historical documentation to confirm this.