Six Strange Traditions from Six Places

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Text to type: La Tomatina is a tomato fight in the town of Buñol, in Spain. It is a street festival, not a meal. The town's own account starts on the last Wednesday of August in 1945. Young people were in the Plaza del Pueblo to watch a parade of giants and big heads. They pushed into the parade. A participant fell and hit a vegetable stall. The crowd threw tomatoes until the police stopped the fight. The next year, people brought tomatoes from home and did it again. In the early 1950s the police banned it, because they did not want it to become a tradition. Some people were even arrested. The town asked for the festival back. It was allowed again and became an official local festival. In 2002 Spain named La Tomatina a Fiesta of International Tourist Interest. The town now runs the day on a clear clock. On the 2025 municipal timetable, the Palo Jabón, a slippery pole, started at 11:00. The tomato festival itself ran from 12:00 to 13:00. At 13:00, cleaning of the route and the nearby streets began. So the famous part is one organized hour in the middle of the day, not an all-day food fight.

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Text to type: Up Helly Aa is the big fire festival in Lerwick, the main town of Shetland, in Scotland. It remembers Shetland's Norse past, but the organized festival people see today grew in Lerwick in the late 1800s. Around 1870, local men gave it the name Up Helly Aa, moved it toward the end of January, and added costumes and torches. A Viking longship, called the galley, joined in the late 1880s. The first galley appeared in 1889. The leader's title, Guizer Jarl, dates from 1906. The festival is on the last Tuesday of January. Volunteers build the galley from late October. The Guizer Jarl chooses its colour, and that colour stays secret until the day. The Guizer Jarl is the chief guizer, the leader of the Jarl Squad. That squad wears Viking dress. The other squads, about forty-five of them, wear fancy-dress suits. Almost a thousand people carry torches. The day is packed. The Jarl Squad marches from the early morning. At the Town Hall, the Guizer Jarl receives the freedom of the town for twenty-four hours. At 19:30 a signal lights more than nine hundred torches. The Jarl stands at the helm of the galley. The procession ends at the burning site on the King George V playing field, and the public stays outside that site. Then the squads visit eleven halls. In each hall they perform a short act and dance with the guests. They often finish near breakfast on Wednesday, and that Wednesday is a public holiday in Shetland.

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Text to type: In Bulgaria, masked dancers are widely known as kukeri. A workshop at the National Museum of History in Sofia teaches that Kukeri dances drive away evil, and that the costumes are both scary and beautiful. The concrete winter feast on the UNESCO list is in the Pernik region. There the feast is called Surova, and the masked groups are called Survakari. UNESCO inscribed Surova in 2015. Surova is on 13 and 14 January, the New Year on the old calendar. On the first night, men, women, and children put on masks and costumes. They go to the village centre, light fires, and play with the crowd. Some people take special roles: the leader, the newly-weds, the priest, and the bear. Early the next morning they walk through the village and visit houses. They ritually marry young couples. The bear pretends to grab people, and that action is for good health. Hosts wait with a meal and gifts. Later the Survakari share those gifts, often with orphans and poor people. Families collect materials all year, and adults teach children how to make the masks.

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Text to type: Land diving is a ritual on Pentecost Island, in Vanuatu. Men jump from a tall wooden tower made of logs and vines. The Vanuatu Tourism Office says the tower can reach about 30 metres. The divers are held by vines, not ropes. The vines are chosen for strength and flexibility, and each jumper calculates the length so he can land safely. People do this to help bring a good yam harvest. Yams are an important food crop. In some communities the dive is also a step toward adult life. In 2026 the public dives run on Saturdays from April through June, in the yam season. On Pentecost Island the meaning is the harvest, courage, and the community, not a sport show.

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Text to type: Famadihana is a family ceremony in Madagascar. People also call it the turning of the bones. Among the Merina and the Betsileo, in the highlands, it is a celebration of family and of life together. It is not a horror show. Two to three years after a burial, the family takes the ancestor from the tomb. They wrap the ancestor in a new silk lamba, a cloth made for this moment. The family and the community greet the ancestor and dance. Then they return the ancestor to the family tomb. The museum that records this ceremony calls it a joyful occasion, not a time of grief. Fresh cloth, dancing, and coming home to the tomb are signs of continued care.

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Text to type: On 31 December, young men dressed as Namahage visit houses on the Oga Peninsula, in Akita, Japan. They wear masks and straw coats, with straw guards on their legs and straw boots for the snow. For people in Oga, these visitors are gods who come with the New Year. They warn against laziness. They also bring protection from illness and disaster, hope for a good harvest, and food from the mountains and the sea. At the door they shout questions about crybabies, children who do not listen to their parents, and whether the woman of the house wakes up early. The hosts welcome them with traditional food and sake. Some Namahage carry a large kitchen knife. It is a symbol, not a weapon for harm. People who sit too long by the fire get blisters, called namomi. "Peeling the blisters" is a picture of leaving laziness behind, and that idea became the name Namahage. People in Oga tell more than one old story about where the Namahage come from, so this lesson stays with the meaning of the visit. The visits used to follow the lunar New Year. They are now on 31 December. In 1978, Oga's Namahage became an Important Intangible Cultural Asset. In 2018, UNESCO inscribed Raiho-shin, ritual visits of deities in masks and costumes. Oga City says Oga no Namahage is one of the ten rituals in that inscription. In a Raiho-shin visit, local people in frightening masks scold laziness, teach children, and receive a meal. The scary face is part of a community welcome.

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