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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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Some wierd Christmas customs from around the world:
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France: Les Coutumes Bizarres
Saint-Nicolas has a partner, le Père Fouettard, Father Spanker, whose job it is to decide whether children have been good or bad and 'reward' bad children with a spanking!
I can see that being popular with the PC brigade, the BDSM community and the anti-corporal punishment movement. 
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Spain:
In Cataluña there's a surprising addition to the traditional nativity crib: el caganer, which means, for want of a more offensive translation, the defecating shepherd. What's more, this scatological streak extends to a peculiarly-shaped local cake, la tifa, with sugar flies to top it all off! 
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Germany: Schräge Gebräuche
Germans know it's New Year's Eve when they watch a short British cabaret sketch from the 1920s on primetime TV. Strangely, 'Dinner for One or the 90th Birthday' has become a German New Year's tradition, even though it is unknown in Britain, where it was created! 
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Italy: Abitudine Curiose
Many small towns feature a Nativity scene with actors wandering around small streets, stables and squares interpreting ancient trades such as saddlers and knife-cutters.
Pipers, zampognari, perform traditional Christmas songs on bagpipes, flutes and oboes. These travelling musicians come down from the mountains in the regions of Abruzzo and Calabria and typically wear bright red jackets and broad-brimmed hats with red tassels. In Rome, the pipers play at the Christmas market in the historic Piazza Navona, on the Spanish Steps and at the entrance to St. Peter's Square. Figures of the zampognari often feature in nativity scenes.
Wierd lot, them Italians.
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