Crazy Christmas Traditions: Ugly Sweater, Surfing, and Killing Children
Santa Claus surprises beachgoers, by arriving on a surfboard!
Australian's don't have a white Christmas ever. By all accounts they have a red hot Christmas. Why? Well, the holiday takes place in the summer season and a 100-degree Christmas day isn't out of the question.
So what does one do if they cannot sled on Christmas? Surf. Australians camp out on the beach and have themselves a nice picnic while awaiting Santa's way cool entrance via surfboard. There's no need for sleighs when the jolly old man himself can imitate surfing legend Kelly Slater.
Lights, Lights, Lights
Families all over the Christian world celebrate Christmas with Eggnog, evergreen trees and lights. Some people go berserk with the lights in an effort to outdo their neighbor's best efforts.
Some people sync their lights up to a musical track, while others just try to blow the whole damn power grid up. Either way, you're going to need some seriously dark shades and high SPF lotion to view these extravaganzas.
We can all blame Light-O-Rama on this light show. After all the company specializes in light, music and special effects tools to make the holidays more annoying than ever.
Krampus & Perchta
In a country like America, children are told that if you've been bad all year Santa will gift you a lump of coal. That tongue-in-cheek story is tame compared to what will happen if you've been a naughty in Austria. Arnold Schwarzenegger won't terminate you; something much worse will happen at the hands of demon's Krampus & Perchta. Krampus will put the bad children in a sack and send them straight to hell. Perchta on the other hands doesn't want to waste a trip. She will savagely rip open the children's abdomens and stuff their dying bodies full of straw. This tradition is bolstered by the fact that every Dec. 5, young men dress up as the demons and scare the bejesus out of women and children alike. Merry Christmas!
Ugly Sweaters galore
If you love Christmas there's a good chance you hate Aunt Gertrude's knitting projects gone awry. Ugly Christmas sweaters are a staple of the holiday season. You can run, but they will always find their way into your holiday photos. You need to wear them all day and they itch like crazy. So when did ugly Christmas sweaters become a thing?
Well, there may not be a specific person we can blame for the travesty of ugly knitted sweaters, but Chevy Chase and Bill Cosby certainly helped popularize this trend. Chase wore all sorts of wacky sweaters in the 1980s Holiday classic National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Meanwhile for nigh a decade Cosby played ugly sweater wearing family man Cliff Huxtable. If it weren't for the plain and simple truth that these two men are great comedians no one would forgive them for this.