Weird traditions from your local area

This is another tradition in my village, the annual "shirt race".

 

It's basically a fancy dress drinking relay. Various stops along the route, one person from each team has to down a pint at each stop (then usually gets pushed to the next stop where they have to start running again).

 

Pretty good fun and some inventive costumes!

https://youtu.be/CqfSXEtcUms

Edited July 23, 2015 by doublename

we have an ultra brutal tradition here

people sit infront of their chaffinch for an hour and mark with some chalk on a stick each time it sings a song

exaite!

 

no weird traditions, but i come from quite an inbred town, and one of the grasskeepers dad is also his grandad. hes pretty fucked up.

Ivan wins thread

  On 7/23/2015 at 11:45 PM, hello spiral said:

Ivan wins thread

some more

 

i live 5km from there

This is not my town but in Belgium almost anywhere can be considered local.

 

In the town of Aalst they hold an annual Carnival parade that they take very, very seriously. It's the biggest of the county. It's pretty grotesque and loud, and the parade cars often make fun of politicians or whatever topics that were in the news a lot.

 

But within the carnival theres this tradition called the "Voil Jeanetten" (translated: dirty sissies) where men dress up like women. To be a voil janet you have to: Wear something that belonged to your grandma, Wear a fur coat, Wear fake tits, Wear a corset, Have an old umbrella, Push a pram, Have a birdcage in the pram, Have a herring in the birdcage. You can also put the herring on a string on a stick. I don't know the exact rules really.

 

NSFW:

 

 

^^^starts around 0:28 onwards

 

 

It stems from a tradition from the 1800s when the working class couldn't afford fancy costumes for the carnavals, so they just put on whatever they had in the house, usually old raggedy clothes that belonged to their wives.

 

If you thought that vid was bad, in the past these guys were allowed to do just about anything. They really took the word "dirty" by heart.

 

 

 

 

This carnival is recognised by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

 

 

 

also:

 

  On 7/23/2015 at 11:45 PM, hello spiral said:

Ivan wins thread

We've got the Mari Lwyd and the Pwca.

 

 

Mari Lwyd is some far out pagan mid-winter horse goddess fertility/blessing shit maaaaaaaaaaaaan:

 

 

 

Pwca is the Puca of Irish Gaelic, also known as Puck in Shakespeare, a general mischief maker known to accost lost drunk folks on the way home from the pub. Not yet mentioned in any divorce proceedings.

  On 7/23/2015 at 11:17 PM, doublename said:

https://youtu.be/CqfSXEtcUms

 

do you go to the Mummers Parade at all? thats some proper old-worldy weirdness

 

 

  On 7/23/2015 at 11:45 PM, messiaen said:

no weird traditions, but i come from quite an inbred town, and one of the grasskeepers dad is also his grandad. hes pretty fucked up.

 

 

Any traditions in my area were long ago buried by the population's lack of any imagination.

  On 7/23/2015 at 11:31 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

we have an ultra brutal tradition here

people sit infront of their chaffinch for an hour and mark with some chalk on a stick each time it sings a song

exaite!

 

 

lol

Not where I live now, but where I grew up:

 

 

 

As far as I know this only happens in two towns in the world. When I was a kid chamions would definitely travel over from Sicily sometimes to compete in the USA and vice versa.

 

It is a mystery.

They used to do races with milk carton boats every year on Lake Calhoun as part of the 2 week Minneapolis Aquatennial festivities, they were always pretty amusing to watch down on the beach...

 

This year though the downtown council is pulling some BS shortening the festival to like 4 days and cutting all of the events, such as this that made it interesting and related to the lakes. Now we get a tennis tourney and 5k run, stupid, we get that shit all the time here... A lot of people are talking of organizing the milk carton races as a third party event now unrelated to the Aquatennial. Edited July 28, 2015 by ghOsty

This happens every year on Easter morning in San Francisco:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEI1YDH6Zu4

So does the Hunky Jesus Contest.

 

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/7225-portraits-from-sfs-2015-hunky-jesus-contest

  On 7/23/2015 at 11:45 PM, hello spiral said:

Ivan wins thread