SANDI Festive customs

From figurines of questionable taste to the darkest of cautionary tales, Sandi raises a glass of eggnog to some unusual festive customs…

Idon’t know how you spent your summer because, frankly, hardly anyone sends a postcard these days, but no matter where I am in the world, my family is used to the fact that I spend the hottest months doing Christmas embroidery. This year, in the sweltering heat of the Costa Rican rainforest, I could be seen sitting by the pool, patiently stitching a new Advent calendar for the family. In Denmark, we often have such hand-sewn calendars, with thousands of individual stitches and 24 golden rings to suspend small gifts from.

I fashion ours in the summer, because they’ll never be ready for the festive season if I don’t. It’s probably not how most people spend their tropical leisure hours, but no one in my inner circle bats an eyelid, because it’s a family tradition.

Knowing this, I am loath to poke fun at other people’s holiday customs, even though there are some that, to the newcomer, raise a smile. Take the caganer of Catalonia in Spain. Ever mindful that you may be eating while reading this, let me be delicate. At Christmas, many of us sport a small nativity scene on the mantelpiece. The Catalonians prefer to go to town on this. Literally. They create entire representations of Bethlehem and, hidden in these cityscapes, there is always a male figure with his trousers round his ankles, showing his bare behind and relieving himself in the worst possible way. No one is quite sure why this is a classic part of Catalonian celebrations, but apparently the kids love it. You can even buy caganer figures in the shape of famous folk and, I’m sorry to tell you, I once saw our entire royal family depicted this way in a shop in Barcelona. I didn’t buy any – it just didn’t scream Christmas to me.

And in the Mexican city of Oaxaca, the Noche de Rábanos makes the Toksvig home-made manger – with its one-eyed shepherd and cotton-wool snow – look positively dreary. The Oaxacans have an annual competition to carve the holy scene out of radishes. I had never thought of using root vegetables to mark a special occasion, but I prefer it to the Christmas celebration at an Arizona gun club, with its Santa And Machine Guns event. Here you can combine the joy of meeting St Nick with holding a lethal weapon, because apparently nothing represents the spirit of the season like an AK-47.

This may be a time for peace on earth, but scaring the kids seems to be a big hit in many corners of the globe. The Austrians delight in a Christmas devil called Krampus who likes to thrash naughty children with branches, while in South Africa, the kids are told the story of Danny, the boy who ate the cookies left out for Father Christmas. This enraged his grandmother so much that she beat him to death, and he now haunts wayward children. This seems rather an extreme story, no matter how good the biscuits were. Let’s face it, though, the season is largely about food. I know some people now splash out on one of those confused fowls which is part turkey, part duck and part something too small to identify, but there probably aren’t many in the UK whose birds of choice are cooked up as kiviak. This is a traditional Inuit food from Greenland. Basically, you need to pack 500 whole auk birds into a seal skin. (Don’t use great auks, because they’re extinct.) Smear the joins with seal fat, bury your kiviak for three months and, when it’s properly fermented and smells like Gorgonzola, enjoy! On Christmas Eve, my whole family becomes immersed in tradition. We lay out the cloths I’ve embroidered, I make pickled red cabbage with apple the way my father always did, and presents are wrapped in brown paper tied with red ribbon. It never changes, and I love that. Whatever your traditions are, I hope that you find comfort in the familiar rhythm of custom. I wish you the very happiest of happy times.

Nothing says the spirit of the season like an AK-47