The Straw Goat
The town of Gavle in Sweden has an odd tradition. Every year at the start of advent (the twelve days of Christmas) they construct an enormous goat out of straw in the town square.
The practice began in 1966 and actually got into the Guinness book of Records in 1985, when the effigy was 41ft tall!
The really strange part though, is that every year people dressed as traditional Yuletide characters (Father Christmas, Jack Frost, Elves, Krampus probably) attempt to burn the goat down, and despite guardians being posted all around it they have succeeded 36 times! We have no idea of what the significance of successfully burning the goat is, but arson as a Christmas tradition seems a little excessive.
Roller Skating To Mass
In Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, it is the tradition that everyone in the city roller-skates to Mass on Christmas morning.
Children go to bed especially early to allow them the energy to rise early and skate across the city, and they traditionally tie a length of string to their big toe, hanging the other end out of the window so that people skating past can give a gentle tug on the string to wake them. No traffic is permitted in the city on Christmas day before 8am, to allow for the thousands and thousands of Christians on their way to church.
