Search results
- There’s An International Hair Freezing Contest In Yukon, Canada. While others despise the winter season and drive it away, people from Yukon, Canada, celebrate this season in a freezing way: dunking their heads into hot springs and waiting for their hair to freeze over, and icicles to form.
- In Gloucestershire, England, People Gather To Roll Cheese Down A Hill. With Spring being the season of rebirth, when nature begins to show itself once more, it’s normal for people to celebrate.
- Castrillo De Murcia In Spain Has A Baby Jumping Festival. Some cultures view a child's birth as a gift not only to the nation but also to the culture overall, a new member to celebrate.
- In Lopburi, Thailand, The Residents Prepare An Annual Feast For The Local Monkeys. Humans are part of nature so it is important to include a bit of the natural aspect into your tradition.
- Jump For (The Bundle of) Joy
- Respect For The Dead
- Alternative to The Tooth Fairy
- Biting The Bullet
- Comfortably Numb
- A Rose by Any Name
- To The Left, to The Left
- Just Like That Episode of Seinfeld
- Business Or Pleasure
- Red Dead Redemption
In North America it's customary to celebrate the birth of a child with a baby shower. Games, snacks, gifts for the new mom. In the Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia, it's traditional to put newborn babies in the street so that strangers dressed as demons can jump over them. This ritual, known as El Colacho (baby jumping) is performed every yea...
In Madagascar, the Malagasy people take respect for dead ancestors to new levels with a ritual known as Famadihana. During Famadihana, people disinter dead relations from family crypts, and rewrap the bodies. Music and dancing ensue as participants parade the bodies around the tombs, and eventually return them to their resting places. This observan...
Instead of putting their lost baby teeth under their pillows in order to get paid, children in Greece instead throw their teeth onto the roofs of their houses and make a wish. I don't know about you, but I could do without the trouble of fishing teeth out of my eaves trough. Photo by Tamara Budai on Unsplash
Virtually all cultures have initiation rites that celebrate the passage from childhood to adulthood. But the Sateré-Mawétribe in the northern Amazon of South America have a particularly tough coming-of-age ritual. In order to attain the status of elder, a young man must stick his hands in a pare of wicker gloves filled with bullet ants and hold the...
In Fiji, guests are often greeted with a rather unusual drink known as kava. It's made by mixing water with the ground root of a local pepper plant, and has a slightly narcotic effect on those who drink it. Kava also tends to numb the tongue and lips. The taste is generally described as bitter and earthy. If you're lucky when you visit Fiji, you ma...
In Russia, as in most countries, certain flowers have very specific meanings. You should never give someone yellow flowers in Russia, for instance, because that usually symbolizes deceit, betrayal, or a break-up. Similarly, red carnations should never be given to the living. They tend to be associated with graveyards and are therefore an ill omen i...
This custom is surprisingly common -- so common in fact that it's hard to list everywhere it applies. If you've ever traveled in the developing world, you will be aware that it's very poor form to use your left hand for almost anything in many countries. Don't eat with it, don't shake with it, don't hand something off with it. No, no, no! The reaso...
You know the one, where people start using knives and forks to eat chocolate bars and the like? That's kind of how it is in Norway. Almost everything is eaten with utensils, including hamburgers and sandwiches. When you're done eating, you cross your knife and fork on the plate, making an X. That tells the server that they can take the plate away. ...
I don't know about you, but I hate when I'm having dinner with someone and all they want to talk about is work. No country agrees with that sentiment more than Bolivia. In Bolivia, it's socially unacceptable to prattle on about your job at social events, and people will likely let you know about it. Even if you're having a business luncheon, it's b...
If you're going to South Korea, it's best to leave your red pens and markers behind. In Korean culture, only the names of the dead are to be written down in red. Writing the name of a living person in red is considered extremely poor form. Image by
- Baby Throwing In India. While this tradition has mostly died out, possibly because it was officially banned, there are still some parts of India that practice it.
- The Thaipusam Festival. This is a Hindu festival organized at the beginning of every year by the members of the Tamil community. It is dedicated to the god of war Lord Murugan and is celebrated on the nights of the full moon.
- The Monkey Buffet Festival. This festival supposedly brings good luck and is organized yearly in Thailand, the city of Lopburi, to be exact. On the last Sunday of November, enormous amounts of food are displayed all over the city and left for monkeys to feast upon.
- Mourning Of Muharram. This celebration is a set of rituals observed by Shia Muslims. It is supposed to commemorate the death of Hussain, the grandson of Muhammad, who died in the Battle of Karbala.
- Long-Lost Cultures. The ancient Egyptians had their pyramids, the Greeks, their sculptures and temples. And everybody knows about the Maya and their famous calendar.
- The Silla. The Silla Kingdom was one of the longest-standing royal dynasties ever. It ruled most of the Korean Peninsula between 57 B.C. and A.D. 935, but left few burials behind for archaeologists to study.
- The Indus. The Indus is the largest-known ancient urban culture, with the people's land stretching from the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan to the Arabian Sea and the Ganges in India.
- The Sanxingdui. The Sanxingdui were a Bronze Age culture that thrived in what is now China's Sichuan Province. A farmer first discovered artifacts from the Sanxingdui in 1929; excavations in the area in 1986 revealed complex jade carvings and bronze sculptures 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall.
Strange Culture is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and starring Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan. It premiered on January 22 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. An excerpt appeared in the fourth issue of Wholphin.
- Lynn Hershman Leeson, Steven Beer, Lise Swenson
- The Residents
Aug 24, 2018 · Looking for some good luck? Throw some plates at your friend's home! Across the world, each culture has its own set of tradtions. Check out some strange cultural traditions from around the world.
Oct 5, 2007 · Directed by Lynn Hershman-Leeson. Documentary. 1h 15m. By Jeannette Catsoulis. Oct. 5, 2007. Somewhere between documentary and dramatization, fact and impression, “Strange Culture” molds one...
