The Atlas Obscura Guide to the World's Strangest Christmas Traditions
By Louise StoryAugust 14, 2026
Christmas markets are interchangeable. Christmas folklore is not. 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. A member of the Milwaukee Krampus Eigenheit at its annual Krampusnacht. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura 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. Dimmuborgir AwOiSoAk KaOsIoWa | CC BY-SA 3.0 Go between December 12th and Christmas Eve if you want the Lads. Gävle, Sweden: watch something burn Since 1966, the Swedish town of Gävle has erected a forty-foot straw Yule Goat in its main square at the start of December. It was the idea of an advertising consultant, and the chief engineer on the original build was his brother, who happened to be the town's fire chief. Yule Goat Tony Nordin | Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) The goat burned down at the stroke of midnight on its first New Year's Eve, and a dark tradition was born. It has been destroyed repeatedly in the decades since — arson mostly, but the record also includes a car attack and an attempted theft by helicopter. Atlas Obscura has maintained a timeline of the goat's unfortunate fates and has been asking whether it will burn this year for over a decade. There is a live webcam. The goat has its own social media accounts, which is either charming or ominous depending on the year. The goat stands from the first Sunday of Advent through New Year's, security permitting. Special street signs marking its square have hung year-round since 2019. Catalonia: the Nativity scene nobody warns you about In Catalonia, traditional nativity scenes include a figure called El Caganer — a small peasant in a red cap, tucked away at the edge of the manger, defecating. He has been part of Catalan nativities since at least the 18th century. Explanations vary: fertilising the earth for the year ahead, a reminder that the divine and the bodily coexist, or simply comic relief. Modern versions come in the shape of politicians and footballers. Look for him in nativity scenes across Barcelona and much of Spain during the season — finding him is part of the tradition. Oaxaca: the Night of the Radishes On December 23rd, Oaxaca holds La Noche de Rábanos — the Night of the Radishes. Carvers fill the main square with sculptures made entirely from radishes: saints, buildings, musicians, replicas of the Pietà and the Last Supper, and in one memorable case a miniature cemetery of radish people celebrating the Day of the Dead. The radishes are enormous, some a foot and a half long and approaching seven pounds, and the city grows them specifically for the competition to keep it fair. Tiny radish people Mario Yair T.S. | Atlas Obscura User The tradition began with farmers carving radishes to attract attention at the Christmas market. The formal competition dates to 1897. Go in the morning to watch the carving and stay for the night to see them finished — and go on the day, because radishes wilt. The whole thing exists for a matter of hours. The United States: Christmas as a permanent condition Not everyone can fly to Salzburg in December, and the United States has produced something the Alps never attempted: Christmas as a permanent condition. Outside Colorado Springs, the North Pole is a Christmas-themed amusement park that opened in 1956 and is still run by the same family. It is open all summer. Its ancestor is Santa's Workshop in the Adirondacks, where you can meet a talking tree named Tannenbaum and post a letter at a post office that genuinely works. In Leavenworth, Washington — a town that decided at some point to become Bavarian — the Nutcracker Museum holds more than 7,000 nutcrackers gathered from over fifty countries. Traditional hand-carved soldiers, yes, but also Garfield, Snoopy, an Egyptian mummy, and a cast-iron Jimmy Carter prototype. The museum's icon is a six-foot beer-drinking Bavarian named Karl. Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum someplacecool | Atlas Obscura User Seattle's Nutcracker House preserves the remains of a local Nutcracker production that no longer performs — open only from late November through December. And for the melancholy version, Atlas Obscura's piece on the uncertain future of Santa's Village, a 1950s Christmas park in California designed in part by former Disney art directors, is the story of what happens when the permanent condition ends. There are nine more places to experience Christmas at any time of year in the Atlas — including an Alaskan trading post that became a Santa house because a child asked whether Santa was building a new home, a marker claiming the site of the first public Christmas tree, and the Arctic Circle post office that has received something like seventeen million letters to Santa. And if you do want a market Go to one. They're lovely. Just choose the city for what else is in it rather than for the huts, and put the tradition on the calendar first — because the market runs for six weeks and the Krampus run lasts one night.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sign in to comment.
Related
Other articles with overlapping topics.
