Some of the best parts of any holiday celebration are the traditions. Certain traditions, such as the menorah or Christmas trees, are common across the world. Others are specific to a single region. Then there are those traditions that are passed down within a family.
Reddit user TheJackal8 asked:
"What is the weirdest holiday tradition your family has?"
Here are some of the best.
Wrapping Rap
We have a present wrapping competition most years, where we select one gift and try to wrap it extra fancy. Last year it was themed "any time or place". Some submissions were themed Jurassic Era, Seattle, the garbage bin and the bathroom.
The best submission ever was my brother and his girlfriend on the very first wrapping comp where they conveniently misheard and submitted a Christmas rap. They wrote and recorded a Christmas rap about the family and it even had backing music. snugglefiend
Hulk Family Holiday
Has to be an orange smashing contest at Christmas eve dinner. Not the chocolate oranges like normal people, but real oranges. Everyone at the table gets one,and gets one hit to do as much damage as they can. My grandma is the judge, and the winner gets to open their present first the next morning. midshipmen89
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Game Show Nostalgia
My mom was on this show called "Supermarket Sweep" (bad Canadian game show) however, no one knew about this until one year my older brother spends 6 months taping reruns of the show trying to find it. He found it and then showed me. Since this was the early 90s you can bet my mom was in a matching purple sweat pant suit with permed hair. Anyway, found the tape and decided it would be perfect to surprise my mom with at our big family dinner on Christmas. It was hilarious and we now bring it out every Christmas because we can and it never gets old watching my mom answer questions about groceries. Donkeyshrek
Are They Irish?
While I was growing up, my dad & I would hide a potato wedge somewhere on the Christmas tree every year to see how long it would take for my mother to notice. Our record was like 9 days. JunkieCulture
The Power of Christ Compels You
My mother has these wooden letters that spell out "SANTA" that she puts out on display during the Christmas season, and I have been rearranging them to say "SATAN" for as long as I can remember. She gets pissed off and changes them back whenever she notices, but I just keep doing it.
My brother does that with my moms "Feliz Navidad" wooden letters. My mom was not happy to walk into the living room after work one day and see "Nazi Dad" next to a picture of my father on the mantel.
We have "Christmas" wooden letters at my apartment, which the other night someone changed to "Racists". JunkieCulture emsoutdoors hobo_clown
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It's 5 o'clock Somewhere
When I still believed in Santa Claus, my dad told me that the whole "santa likes cookies and milk" thing was bullshit and that what he really wanted left out for him was margaritas and popcorn. So it was tradition in our house to leave margaritas and popcorn for Santa. Apparently Santa and my dad are into the same stuff. JunkieCulture
Santa is More of an Island Man
Leaving rum for Santa, since "it's a rough night for him."
So do drinking and driving laws not apply to flying sleds?
The police might have a hard time pulling him over.
SCRAMBLE THE JETS, (SANTA)'S DRINKING AGAIN! neqailaz Cannibal_Moshpit
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Burn Baby, Burn
My family and several other families in my Church would sometime after Christmas, gather all the Christmas trees and have a Christmas Tree Bonfire on the beach. It was perhaps the best thing ever.
'Til my Church was busted for throwing 3 trees onto the fire at once causing a huge magnificent 20ft flame to erupt. The Fire Department was called. Our tradition pretty much ended after that. Over-Analyzed
The Gift No One Wants
My uncle received a prepackaged and extremely unappetizing fruitcake as a Christmas present when he was about seventeen. As a joke, he wrapped it up and gave it to my grandmother (his mother) on Christmas day.
The next year, my uncle opened his final Christmas present from my grandmother. It was the fruitcake, still uneaten and still unwrapped. A legacy began. Every Christmas, the current bearer of the fruitcake gave it to the other in increasingly ludicrous ways.
One year, my grandmother asked my uncle to pour the orange juice on christmas morning. Inside the carton was: the fruitcake.
Another year an anonymous gift of gourmet jello arrived at my uncle's door. Suspended within was the fruitcake.
The next year, my uncle baked the fruitcake into a loaf of bread. While my grandmother was cutting the bread, she cut the end off of the fruitcake. She nailed it back on with a roofing nail.
Often, third parties are coerced into assisting with the delivery. When my mother married my father, her initiation process as the new daughter- in- law was the present my grandmother on Christmas with: the fruitcake.
My grandmother retired from the school board one Christmas, and her confused supervisor's parting gift to her was: the fruitcake.
The fruitcake arrives in decorative wreaths. It is found in a daughter's doll house. It is lowered from the ceiling with twine during Christmas dinner.
The fruitcake is 36 years old this Christmas. We have yet to unwrap it (from the original cellophane). tigris1427
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We Few...
Me and my brother used to watch Band of brothers, all 10 hours, on Christmas Eve. It's weird when the battle of Bastogne reminds you of holly jolly Christmas cheer. EdmDantes
Narnia
My mum and dad turn their bedroom in to Narnia. You open their door to be met with fur coats and a load of fake snow chucked at you by one of my cousins. An over-worked smoke machine has filled the room with it's magical mist, so the only thing you can see is a half-sized street lamp glowing in the corner. As the smoke clears you see Mr Tumnus (my dad) who greats you with some (recorded) flute music. After this, the white witch (my mum) invites you on to her sleigh (her bed), and offers you some turkish delight. That's when things get really weird. When all of the siblings are on the bed, the sleigh-ride begins (they've set up a projector which shows a first person view of a mountain ride), while they and my cousins (who are dressed as animals) run up and down the sides of the bed throwing fake snow at you and holding bits of tree to make it look, in my mothers words, "more realistic". Then we all get drunk and open our presents.
I should point out that this tradition is only 3 years old, and it's got more elaborate every year. I should also point out that the youngest of the children in my family is 25. Free__Will
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Stuck In the Middle
We call each other by our middle names on Christmas Eve. I have no idea how it started. barnaclelips
Nutrition Suspension
Chocolate for breakfast on Christmas day, because who needs a balanced breakfast! Emmahlee20
Carols are for Lightweights
Decorating the Christmas tree at Dad's house while listening to death metal. nomadbishop
It's a Wrap
We try to disguise our presents in different size boxes, and try to make it as ridiculous and hilarious to open as is possible.
My favorite example was 2 years ago, my brothers present to me was (at first) a box that was roughly the size of a printer. Then it was several boxes within a box (all boxes were wrapped of course), and then in the very last box was a deodorant stick. Then I had to unscrew the deodorant all the way until it popped out, and underneath that was a plastic bag that contained a gift card.
Yeah, we waste a lot of wrapping paper., but it's hilarious seeing all of us get frustrated trying to figure out what the present is. Mediocre-raptor
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I can't definitively say I've come face to face with the spirits. But I have had some unsettling feelings in the dark. Shadows are just shadows sometimes, but who can be sure.
I hear it...
Nbc Wings GIF by HULUGiphy"I was helping my dad clean my grandma's house after she passed and I went in and was trying to find a song in my phone and before I could I heard a cough plain as day come from down the hallway where her room was. She died of lung and throat cancer it was pretty crazy."
Running Past...
"When I was 5 I remember getting home from my grandpa's birthday party. For context my mom was pregnant with my brother at the time, so my parents had already bought his crib. I woke up in the middle of the night to find a women in a white dress and long black hair standing over my brother's crib. I managed to wake up my dad so he could take me to the bathroom. When I got back it was still there. It was only until morning when it disappeared. Every now and then I see a glance of what I assume is that thing running past the backyard."
The Cat
"My best friend and his wife had moved to a new apartment. I came over to visit a few times, and each time I'd see the motion of a cat in my peripheral vision. Not the image of a cat, but a sense of how a cat moves. Anyway, one day I finally cracked some joke about the ghost cat in the place and his wife was instantly saying "See! See! I told you we had a ghost cat!"
"excuse me"
"I worked graveyard shift in a dementia ward for 4 years and it was anything but quiet. I was working with a nurse one night when we both heard a resident say "excuse me." We looked around and no-one was there. I checked on the resident in question and she was fast asleep in her own room. Many of us also experienced someone whistling in the ward late at night and one nurse even managed to catch a video of it happening. It was unnerving to say the least."
Clueless
Skeleton GIFGiphy"I once saw someone short walk by me in my house. They walked into the laundry room which only has one way in. I walked into it behind them and they where gone. I thought it was my little brother but I went to his room and he was asleep. I still have no clue what that was."
- ImBolio
Now was everyone here positive they were sober? Just asking. Those are certainly spooky moments. I'd like some video footage please. Continue...
Reflections
ghost library GIFGiphy"I was up at 3am when I was maybe 7 or 8. I looked out the window and saw a woman in a white dress run across my yard. I could see through her. She was transparent like the reflections on the window."
"you alright?"
"So, my work place is haunted. I was having a really crap day, and as a cleaner, it's normal that me and my co worker will be the only ones left at night. So I was standing on the second floor, leaning on the banister for the stair case, when I heard this male voice say in my ear "you alright?" Clear as day. I turned around so fast and nobody was there and it scared the hell out of me."
- Rex-the-
Watching Me
"I remember as a young kid I usually use to sit in my bed and watch tv with my room door open while the adjacent guest bedroom next to mine would always have the door shut. I always remember seeing that door fully open and close by itself multiple times a day very slowly and gently. Never really bothered me much now that I think about it… but there were other creepier experiences I had in the same house that made me feel uncomfortable like I was being watched."
Betsy
"I went to the Betsy Ross House as a really little kid in the early 90s. Normal house but I was confused why the tour guide never talked about the woman on the chair crying at the edge of the bed in Betsy Ross's bedroom. So I asked about it. No one else saw the woman at the edge of the bed. I figured it was just a wax museum since there was a wax statue of a man in uniform rolling bullets in the basement."
"Years later, I was looking at haunted Philadelphia tours to go on with a friend and the Betsy Ross House was on it. I was like "woah! I was there!" and looked into it some more. Turns out there is a woman at the end of the bed crying and a uniformed man in the basement that people have reported seeing. There is no way that 8 year old me would have known about either of these things."
hello kitty...
hello kitty lol GIF by Animation Domination High-DefGiphy"I had this hello kitty Balloon In my bed room, it had a string and weight on it. So it was late, I had the lights on just Sitting on my bed. The Balloon turns, faces my door, slowly floats into my hallway and turns and floats into my sister's room. To this day I am scared of balloons."
They are among us and they like Hello Kitty. I'm probably rattling the paranormal cages and they'll come for me next, but I'm ready. I feel like this thread has prepared me.
Boo!
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