Every family has that one holiday “rule”the thing you don’t question because it’s always been The Thing. Maybe it’s adorable. Maybe it’s mildly chaotic. Maybe it’s so weird you only realize it’s weird when a guest witnesses it and quietly asks, “So… this is… normal here?”
That’s the energy behind Bored Panda’s community prompt, “Hey Pandas, What’s The Weirdest Holiday Tradition You Have?” It’s a simple question with a sneaky superpower: it turns ordinary people into storytellers. Because the best holiday traditions aren’t always the fanciest. They’re the ones that make your family your familyinside jokes, invented rituals, and comforting routines that feel like home even when the turkey is dry.
In the Bored Panda thread, you can see how “weird” doesn’t always mean “wacky.” Sometimes it means unexpected: one person shares that, because they’re Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas, their tradition is Chinese food and a moviea holiday classic for many Americans who don’t do the tree-and-stockings thing. Another shares a tradition that’s basically a slow-motion prank on their own childhood patience: the family sits down to open gifts… and then everyone takes turns going to the bathroom first. It’s inconvenient, hilarious, and exactly the sort of ritual that becomes legendary.
So what makes holiday traditions get this delightfully strange? And why do we cling to them so fiercelyespecially when they don’t make practical sense? Let’s unpack what’s going on, highlight the most common “weird tradition” categories, and steal a few ideas you might want to adopt (or at least admire from a safe distance).
Why “Weird” Traditions Are Actually the Most Human Ones
Holiday traditions are basically memory machines. They compress a whole family history into repeatable moments: the same smell, the same song, the same dish, the same ridiculous argument about how many lights are “too many lights” (there is no such number; do not bring math into this).
Folklorists have long pointed out that traditions aren’t fossilsthey’re flexible. They travel, adapt, mash up, and sometimes get invented on a random Tuesday because somebody’s kid cried and a parent panicked and now you’re “always” doing it that way. In other words: traditions aren’t ruined by change; they’re often created by it.
That explains why so many “weird” traditions have origin stories that start with:
- “We were broke that year…”
- “We couldn’t travel…”
- “The power went out…”
- “Grandpa did something once and we never recovered…”
- “COVID happened…”
And then suddenly you’ve got a permanent ritualbecause a workaround turned into a warm memory, and now it’s sacred.
The Bored Panda Effect: Why These Threads Feel Like Group Therapy (But Fun)
Bored Panda’s “Hey Pandas” prompts work because they’re low-stakes and high-relatability. You don’t need to be an expert. You just need a story. And holiday traditions are story gold: they’re personal, emotional, and usually involve food, mild conflict, or both.
In the “Weirdest Holiday Tradition” thread, the prompt is straightforward: “Do you have any Christmas traditions? Share the weirdest ones!” The replies instantly show how diverse “holiday” can be. Some are tied to religion, some to culture, some to family quirks, and some to pure stubbornness.
Most importantly, these stories remind us: you’re not “doing the holidays wrong” if your celebration doesn’t match a movie montage. Traditions don’t have to be universal to be meaningful. They just have to be yours.
Category #1: Food Traditions That Make Outsiders Blink Twice
Food is the easiest place for traditions to get wonderfully weird because it’s both practical and emotional. If you eat something every year, you’ll associate it with the seasonwhether it’s a roast, a casserole, or a suspiciously neon gelatin salad your aunt insists is “vintage.”
Chinese Food and a Movie: An American Christmas Tradition (Yes, Really)
One of the most recognizable “non-traditional” traditions in the U.S. is eating Chinese food on Christmas, often paired with a trip to the movies. While it’s sometimes treated like a punchline, it’s also a real cultural patternespecially in big cities where Jewish and Chinese immigrant communities historically lived near each other, and where Chinese restaurants were more likely to be open on Christmas.
In the Bored Panda thread, one person describes exactly that: Chinese food and a movie because they don’t celebrate Christmas. What’s “weird” to one household is comfort to another. And honestly? A warm meal, a dark theater, and zero pressure to assemble a toy with 900 pieces at 1 a.m. sounds like a holiday miracle.
Lucky Foods and Symbolic Bites
Across America, families also carry traditions tied to “luck” foodslike dishes meant to bring prosperity, health, or good vibes into the new year. Some of these are rooted in heritage (Italian-American, Southern, Caribbean, Latino, Eastern European, you name it). Others are simply family lore: “We eat this because Grandma said it keeps the bad luck away,” and nobody dares question Grandma.
Category #2: Ritual Rules That Exist Purely to Test Patience
Some traditions aren’t about what you eat or what you buythey’re about the order of events. The choreography. The “we do it like this because we do it like this.”
The Bathroom Parade Before Presents
One of the funniest examples from the Bored Panda thread is the family tradition where everyone sits down to open gifts… and then, at the exact moment of maximum excitement, everyone gets up and goes to the bathroom one by one. It’s a thirty-minute delay ritual that apparently used to drive the kids crazy.
This is the kind of tradition that probably started as logistics (“Wait, does anyone need the restroom before we begin?”) and then evolved into a deliberate ritual because it got a reactionmeaning: it became family comedy.
And that’s a pattern: a lot of weird holiday traditions are just repeatable jokes.
Category #3: Ornament Games, Hidden Objects, and Holiday Scavenger Hunts
If your holiday includes a treeor even if it doesn’tsomeone, somewhere, has tried to gamify it. That’s how you get traditions like the Christmas pickle: a pickle-shaped ornament hidden in the tree, with the finder winning a prize, bragging rights, or first dibs on gifts.
The pickle tradition is famously debatedoften described as “German,” but widely understood as a German-American or American-made custom that became popular in certain regions and through ornament sellers and holiday media. Regardless of its origin story, it’s a perfect example of how traditions can be real even when they’re relatively new. If your family has done it for ten years, it’s already lore.
Other families do similar games with:
- A special “last ornament” that someone has to hide or earn
- A yearly “memory ornament” that represents something that happened that year
- A scavenger hunt that leads to the first gift
- A prank ornament that keeps reappearing like a seasonal ghost
Category #4: “We Do This Because One Year It Went Wrong” Traditions
Many “weird” traditions are basically trauma-response, but festive. One year, something didn’t workso the family improvisedand now the improvisation is canon.
The Pandemic-Invented Traditions That Refused to Leave
In the same Bored Panda thread, one person shares a tradition that started during lockdown: writing songs for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, even making music videos. That’s not just sweetit’s a textbook example of how constraints create creativity. When the normal celebration is unavailable, families invent something new, and sometimes the new thing is better because it’s more personal.
America saw a lot of this in recent years: remote gatherings, driveway caroling, “mail a cookie tin” swaps, gift openings on video calls, and inventive ways to stay connected when in-person wasn’t possible. Some people were thrilled to return to normal; others kept the new rituals because they discovered what actually mattered to them.
Category #5: Heritage Traditions That Feel “Weird” Until You Learn the Story
In a country as diverse as the United States, “holiday traditions” can mean Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Lunar New Year, Día de los Muertos, Eid, and countless regional or family-specific celebrations. When traditions travel and adapt in America, they often become hybrids: familiar in feeling, unique in details.
Take community holiday trees and public lightings, for example. In Washington, D.C., the “National Christmas Tree” lighting became a big public tradition in the early 20th century, and it has evolved over time into a modern seasonal event. Meanwhile, in places like Bethlehem, Pennsylvaniaknown for Moravian rootsholiday traditions can include distinctive practices like nativity “putz” displays and candlelit services that reflect deep local history.
What looks “weird” from the outside is often a living record of migration, neighborhood history, and community identity.
How to Create Your Own Weird Holiday Tradition (Without Forcing It)
If you’re hoping to start a new traditionespecially one that feels organichere’s the trick: don’t try to manufacture “iconic.” Try to manufacture repeatable.
Start With One of These Easy Tradition Templates
- The Annual Same-Thing Meal: Pick a dish you can realistically make every year. Bonus points if it’s not stressful.
- The “Year in Review” Ornament: Add one ornament that represents a shared memory from that year.
- The Scheduled Silliness: A 10-minute “holiday game” that everyone can do, even the grumpy uncle.
- The Charity Anchor: Volunteer, donate, or do a family “kindness mission” that becomes part of the season.
- The Tiny Prank: Something harmless and predictable (like rearranging letters on a decoration) that becomes tradition because everyone pretends to be shocked every year.
The best weird traditions usually have three qualities:
- Low effort (so you actually keep doing it)
- High meaning (or high laughter)
- Room to evolve (so it doesn’t break when life changes)
What These “Weird” Traditions Really Reveal
When people share odd holiday rituals, they’re not just swapping fun facts. They’re signaling belonging. A tradition is a shared script: “This is how our people do this.” And in a world where everything moves fast, repeating a small ritual once a year can be grounding.
That’s why threads like Bored Panda’s are so satisfying to read. You start for the quirky stories, and you stay for the reminder that every family is basically a tiny culturecomplete with artifacts (ornaments), mythology (“This started in 1987 when…”), and sacred rites (the bathroom parade, apparently).
So whether your tradition is a formal religious practice, a heritage celebration, a food ritual, or a chaos gremlin of an inside joke, it’s doing the same job: turning time into meaning.
Experience Add-On: 500+ Words of “Weird Holiday Tradition” Moments
Below are “experience-style” snapshots in the spirit of the original promptwritten as the kinds of stories people share in communities like Bored Panda. They’re not meant as universal truths; they’re meant as familiar, funny, and oddly comforting examples of how traditions show up in real life.
1) The Doorway Wrapping Paper Challenge
Some families turn Christmas morning into a mini action movie. Before the kids wake up, adults tape wrapping paper across bedroom doorways like festive security gates. The kids have to burst through the paper like tiny holiday superheroes. It started as a way to stop early gift-sneaking. It stayed becausehonestlyit’s fun watching a six-year-old dramatically shoulder-check a wall of snowmen print.
2) The “One Weird Gift” Exchange
Every year, everyone brings a normal gift… and one intentionally odd gift that must be wrapped beautifully, like it’s expensive. The weird gift might be a framed photo of a celebrity’s dog, a single giant spoon, or a candle labeled “Essence of Regret.” The rule: you have to act genuinely grateful. The best part is the performance, not the present.
3) The Annual Movie That Makes No Sense
While some families watch classic holiday films, others commit to one totally off-brand movieevery year. Not “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but the same random action flick or the same comfort-watch comedy. Eventually, the family quotes it like scripture. Outsiders are confused. That’s how you know it’s working.
4) The “Bless This Mess” Dinner Toast
Before the meal, instead of a formal prayer, someone gives a short toast celebrating the chaos: the burned rolls, the late arrival, the dog that stole the ham last year, and the fact that everyone still showed up. It’s funny, but it’s also weirdly emotionallike admitting the holiday doesn’t have to be perfect to be real.
5) The Secret-Santa-With-A-Plot-Twist
On paper, it’s a standard Secret Santa. In practice, it has sub-rules. You must include one item that represents an inside joke. You must include one “useful” item. You must include one item that is completely useless but hilarious. It turns gift-giving into a storytelling challenge, and suddenly the presents have footnotes.
6) The “We Don’t Do Christmas… But We Do Cookies” Tradition
Some families skip the typical Christmas celebration entirely, but still treat the season as an excuse for connectionlike baking cookie boxes for neighbors, friends, coworkers, or the local mail carrier. The tradition isn’t about the holiday itself; it’s about the ritual of generosity, done in a way that feels authentic.
7) The “Bathroom Intermission” (Yes, Really)
And then there are the traditions that exist purely to test the laws of patience. You’ve got gifts in front of you. Cameras are ready. Everyone is seated. And suddenly someone says, “Okaybathroom break,” and the whole family lines up like it’s a theme park. Kids groan. Adults laugh. A tradition is born.
If you recognize even one of these, congratulations: your holiday season has lore.
Conclusion
Bored Panda’s “Hey Pandas” question works because it gives people permission to be honest: the holidays aren’t just polished traditions and picture-perfect tables. They’re also bathroom parades, Chinese takeout, prank ornaments, accidental rituals, and songs written during lockdown that somehow became permanent.
So if your tradition is “weird,” you’re not doing it wrongyou’re doing it human. And if you don’t have one yet? Don’t worry. All it takes is one memorable year, one small workaround, and one family member who insists, “Okay, but now we have to do it every year.”
