“Black Pete” & Other Odd Scandinavian Traditions
Date: December 17, 2012Category: Author: Infinity Dental Web
Slightly Creepy Holiday Traditions From Around The World
After learning about how other people celebrate the holidays, I can honestly say I am glad to be an American. While we drink eggnog, sing along to Christmas carols and our children wait for Santa to bring them presents, in the Ukraine people decorate their trees with spiders instead of tinsel, and in Spain children beat a log until it excretes their presents.
As there are numerous unsettling non-American traditions out there, here is a list of just four creepy traditions—excluding the just plain nasty ones I couldn’t bear to write about:
1) Iceland—Yule Lads. Instead of elves, Iceland has their own Santa’s helpers called ‘Yule Lads.’ They resemble Snow White’s seven dwarfs except they’re much, much creepier. And it doesn’t help they have names like Pot-Scraper, Door-Sniffer, Spoon-Licker, and Window-Peeper. Despite the fact that their names are ridden with all sorts of eerie innuendos, the Yule Lads do resemble jolly old St. Nicholas in that they ‘give’ the children of Iceland gifts during the 13 days leading up to Christmas. While this seems harmless, they do have a pet cat cleverly named ‘Yuletide Cat’ who supposedly eats all the children who don’t receive new clothes by Christmas. I really don’t understand this—shouldn’t the cat be eating the spoiled children who are get with lots of gifts, instead of the poor kids who barely have any clothes to wear?
2) Latvia—Demented Winter Festival. Instead of Christmas, Latvians celebrate a Pagan festival called Ziemassvētki from the evening of December 24th to the 25th in which the locals feast on delicacies such as boiled pig’s snout. But not only that, they leave food out for the ‘ghosts’ and I don’t mean on the dinner table. The food can be left in a barn, a sauna, or anywhere for that matter. And it’s left out until New Year’s so that it’s available to the beloved ones who have departed until the beginning of the New Year. My guess is that the rats get to the food first before the spirits do. On top of all this, Norweigan ‘mummers’ (townspeople, so basically anyone and everyone) dress up in ridiculous costumes—typically as bears and horses—and knock on random people’s doors and sing to drive away evil spirits. It sounds a lot like Halloween trick-or-treating in America, except these people are usually adults instead of children and they get alcohol instead of candy.
3) Norway “Hide the Broom”. This tradition also reminds me of our celebration of Halloween. Norwegians celebrate Christmas pretty similarly to us Americans, with church services, feasting, and general merriment. Except they also have a bizarre if not creepy tradition of ‘broom-hiding.’ Norwegians households on Christmas Eve hide their brooms and brushes so that the witches and evil spirits (who supposedly rise from the dead the night before Christmas) don’t steal these ‘necessities’ and wreak havoc until the dawn of Christmas Day. This is really, really strange….I could see hiding your iPad, but is broom really that valuable?
4) Netherlands—Zwart Piet. The Dutch have possibly the most disturbing Christmas tradition of all. Santa Claus, or Sinterklaas as he is called in the Netherlands, does not have elves but one helper called Zwart Piet, which literally means ‘Black Pete.’ I already am uncomfortable with just knowing the name. So Sinterklaas and Zwart Piet arrive by boat every Christmas to give presents to the good children, while the bad children get abducted by Black Pete who takes them back to Spain as punishment. There is some dispute over the obvious racial issue here of Santa having a black ‘helper’ doing all his work for him, but the purists who believe in keeping the tradition say that Pete’s face is obviously black because it’s covered in soot from going down all the chimneys….duh! Yet why does Black Pete have an afro and absurdly large lips? Oh, a better question…why do so many Dutch white people feel the need to dress up as him for Christmas? Maybe people around the world think our Christmas traditions are weird too. What do you think? Are our traditions weird to those outside the country?
Dr. Mike Malone and his team practice expert cosmetic dentistry in Lafayette, LA. Dr. Malone is the former president and current accredited member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is also the official Cosmetic Dentist of the Miss Louisiana USA and Miss Louisiana Teen USA pageants. Check out his website for more information.