Barrtalk: Some weird and wonderful Christmases around the world

With just over a week until the big day, the countdown is firmly on for Christmas 2025, when most of us should get to enjoy some well-deserved downtime with family and friends after another busy year. Are there any other kinds?

We’re all familiar with the usual traditions for December 25 – Santa Claus, turkey and ham, the exchange of gifts, etc – but here’s a Barrtalk look at some of the more weird and wonderful Christmas traditions.

Did you know that the Japanese eat Kentucky Fried Chicken on the big day, rather than turkey? And when I see ‘eat’, they can’t get enough of KFC for Christmas, so much so that takeaway dinners are booked weeks and months in advance.

Apparently, the strange phenomenon was born out of a combination of tiny Japanese ovens and a clever marketing campaign, in which every Colonel Sanders is decked out in festive garb. I wish it would catch on over here, too, and save us all the bother of slaving over a gargantuan turkey in an oven for four hours.

In Norway? Householders frantically hide their brooms before they go to sleep on Christmas Eve to ward off evil spirits.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, it’s customary to travel to the church services on roller skates, with many roads in the capital, Caracas, closed off to allow skaters to get there safely. [Although judging by the demographic attending religious services locally, I don’t think this one will take off in Inishowen any time soon!].

Ukrainians like to put artificial spiders and webs on their Christmas trees for good luck, while the Portuguese often set extra places at the Christmas dinner table for deceased relatives. A bit gloomy that one, to be honest.

Or how about the Filipinos who hold the world record for celebrating the longest Christmas season on the planet. It seems, in the Philippines, they start decking the halls as early as September, and the festive spirit often stretches all the way through to the end of January, which is a bit much, even for an aficionado.

Me? I think I’ll stick to the dinner for us living – followed by an evening Christmas special, from the Royle Family or The Office, with a few large bottles of Birra Moretti. Nothing weird about that, obviously.

How much will you spend on that doggy (or cat) in the window?

I’ve always suspected that some pet owners are way too attached to their animals, which they treat not so much as surrogate humans but as infinitely more important than humans.

And now a Christmas pet survey has revealed the truth – i.e. that we’re becoming a pet-mad nation.

The survey, commissioned by a Dublin shopping centre, has found that 50 per cent of Irish pet owners spend more on their animals than they do on their [two-legged] partners at Christmastime.

Irish households love their animals, and dogs take the lead as the most spoiled companions. More than 85 per cent of respondents buy gifts for dogs, followed by cats, rabbits, hamsters and even more unusual pets, including bearded dragons, horses and tortoises.

What might be even more alarming, though, is that more than 70 per cent of respondents admit that they giftwrap their pets' Christmas presents, with more than half (53 per cent) of pet owners buying festive outfits for their animals each year.

I don’t know which is the more crazy: Allowing a dog to unwrap its own presents [with a signed gift card to boot] or dressing it up in a Christmas jumper! Not much fear of the cost-of-living crisis for reliable old Rover; woof, woof!

As ever, it’s the owners who are nuts, rather than the poor pets, who remain blissfully oblivious. All I can say is, it’s just as well, Her Indoors doesn’t have a pet to blow the festive budget on. Otherwise, it’d be porridge for this columnist instead of turkey come December 25.

Incidentally, the survey has also landed on Ireland’s supposed favourite pets, which include: Misneach, the Bernese mountain dog belonging to Michael D Higgins, followed by Roy Keane’s dog Triggs, and Taylor Swift’s cat Meredith.

Forget sparkly outfits and rubber toys, I bet that Meredith Swift (pictured above) gets two weeks in the lap of five-star luxury in the Bahamas for its annual Christmas box.

An A.I. Christmas? No thanks

And finally this week, sticking to the overwhelming Christmas theme, I caught my first sight of the festive ‘Holidays Are Coming’ classic advert for Coca-Cola on TV the other day.

I say classic ad. But actually, the new AI-generated version has butchered the magical original and left it full of soulless and obviously very fake people and anthropomorphic animals loping about the place.

The genius of the original commercial from 1995 was the sense of wonder it captured on the faces of young and old, as the brightly-lit cavalcade of Coca-Cola lorries wound its way through snowy towns, which were illuminated as the sparkling lorries trundled past.

Ironically, that ad signs off with: “Tis the season; It’s always the real thing.” But the 2025 version is very obviously inauthentic and not at all the real thing.

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How long before AI messes with the actual taste of Coke, which Barrtalk has previously listed as one of the ten greatest inventions in human history? And I’m not joking. The flavour of Coca-Cola is sacrosanct, just like its ad of thirty years should have been.

If it ain't broke, don’t fix it. AI for some things; humans for most.