48 Fun Facts About Customs and Traditions

In Japan, what must a visitor do at a home's genkan, the sunken entryway just inside the front door?

Visitors remove their shoes at the genkan and avoid touching its lower tiled floor even in socks, so no outside dirt crosses into the house. Inside, they change into slippers kept for the purpose.

In Thailand, which part of the body is considered unclean, never to be pointed at a person or a thing?

The feet are symbolically unclean, the reverse of the head, which is sacred and never touched; sitting on a temple floor, visitors tuck their legs so that no sole points at a person or a Buddha image.

Which gesture, common across India, can mean yes, okay or 'I understand' depending on the context?

The head bobble, a side-to-side tilt, is so context-dependent that it can also signal 'maybe' or plain polite acknowledgement. It is found across South Asia but is most associated with India.

Which practice, routine in American restaurants, do staff in Japan often politely refuse?

Tipping is not a custom in Japan; any service charge is fixed or built into the price, and restaurant staff have been known to chase customers down to hand back money left on the table.

On 1 April in France, what do pranksters try to attach to a victim's back without being noticed?

A paper fish is the French April Fool, the poisson d'avril, a phrase a poet wrote as early as 1508, long before English speakers wrote of April fools.

English Morris dancers traditionally wear which noisy accessory strapped to their shins?

Bells on pads strapped to the shins jingle with each step; the dance was dying out when Cecil Sharp watched the Headington Quarry men at Christmas 1899, took down their tunes and set off a revival.

Which aristocrat, Anna Russell, is credited with starting afternoon tea to fill the long gap before the evening meal?

The Duchess of Bedford, Anna Russell, is commonly cited as afternoon tea's originator: she is said to have had tea and cake sent to her room, then begun inviting friends, and the habit grew into a fashionable social event.

During Swan Upping, the annual ceremony on England's River Thames, what happens to the mute swans that are rounded up?

Ringed and released is the swans' fate, because by prerogative right the Crown owns every unmarked mute swan in open water, and the annual round-up keeps track of them.

Which small case holding a parchment with Torah verses do Jewish families fix to the doorposts of their homes?

A mezuzah takes its name from the Hebrew for 'doorpost', and the parchment inside carries the passages of Deuteronomy that command the practice itself.

A South Korean law of June 2023 scrapped which tradition?

Counting newborns as one, then adding a year for everyone each 1 January, made a baby born on 31 December two the next day; when official use ended on 28 June 2023, South Koreans became a year or two younger.

German children starting school are handed a Schultüte, a large decorated cone traditionally filled with what?

Sweets gave the cone its other name, Zuckertüte, 'sugar cone'; the gift is meant to sweeten an anxious first day of school, and toys and stationery now share the space.

Which song is Mexico's traditional birthday serenade?

Las Mañanitas is traditionally sung early in the morning to wake the birthday person, and its verses say as much, urging the sleeper to wake up and see that dawn has already come.

Which country's calendar has thirteen months, the last of them only five or six days long?

Ethiopia's calendar has twelve months of exactly thirty days plus a short thirteenth for the leftover days, and its year count runs seven to eight years behind because it dates the birth of Jesus differently.

Two-up, the coin-tossing gambling game, is traditionally played in Australian pubs on which day of the year?

Anzac Day two-up recalls the soldiers who played it widely in the First World War; returned men played it after the day's march, and outside a few licensed venues it is still illegal for most of the year.

In a New Orleans jazz funeral, what name is given to the crowd that follows the brass band purely for the music?

The second line follows behind the family and band, twirling parasols and handkerchiefs once the sombre dirges give way to upbeat tunes after the body is entombed.

The Inuit kunik, often mislabelled an 'Eskimo kiss', presses the nose tip against which part of the other person?

The cheek, not another nose, receives the kunik: the nose is pressed to the skin and the loved one's scent breathed in, a gesture of affection very often made to small children.

Which two staples greet honoured guests in Russia, giving the language its word for hospitality, khlebosolny?

Bread and salt are offered to guests in a welcome ceremony across the Slavic world; in imperial Russia a high salt tax made the salt an expensive, prized thing to set before a visitor.

On Koningsdag, 27 April, what may the Dutch do in the street without the usual permit?

The right to sell used goods on the street, free of permits and VAT for the day, creates the vrijmarkt, or 'free market', a flea market that runs nationwide.

Which chocolate-dipped biscuit stick gives South Korea a gift day on 11 November, a date that looks like four of them?

Pepero is made by Lotte, which says it did not invent the day but took up a schoolgirl craze: in the usual telling, girls swapped the sticks in the hope of growing as slim as a Pepero.

Which Māori New Year festival, named for the Pleiades star cluster, became a New Zealand public holiday in 2022?

Matariki marks the cluster's first pre-dawn rising in late June or early July; at the hautapu ceremony, dishes are cooked in an earth oven and uncovered so that the steam rises to feed the stars.

Ukraine's pysanka, a national symbol, is an Easter egg decorated using which technique?

Wax-resist dyeing, in which melted wax shields each colour before the next dye bath, gives the pysanka its name, from the Ukrainian verb 'to write': the patterns are written on in hot wax.

How is Iceland's telephone directory alphabetised, a consequence of most Icelanders having no family surname?

By first name is the only workable order because Icelanders carry patronymics such as Jónsdóttir rather than inherited surnames; to tell namesakes apart, the directory also lists professions.

Which 18-minute English-language comedy sketch, recorded in 1963, is watched in Germany every New Year's Eve?

Dinner for One, with Freddie Frinton and May Warden, was by 1995 the most frequently repeated television programme in Germany, yet it remains little known in Britain where the sketch began.

At a Korean doljanchi first-birthday party, what does the doljabi ritual invite the baby to do?

Pick an object from a tray and the choice is read as a forecast of the child's future, a brush hinting at scholarship, in a custom modelled on the Chinese zhuazhou.

Which dish do Koreans traditionally eat for breakfast on their birthday?

Seaweed soup, miyeok-guk, is what new mothers eat for weeks after childbirth, so a birthday bowl honours the mother who ate it when you were born.

In South Korea, how should a younger person drink beer poured by an elder, according to traditional table etiquette?

Facing away from them while drinking shows deference, just as drinks and objects are passed and received with two hands rather than with a single hand.

Which carved wooden birds, symbols of fidelity, appear in pairs at a traditional Korean wedding?

Mandarin ducks are carved in pairs as 'wedding ducks' to represent peace, fidelity and plentiful offspring; wedding geese likewise stand for a long and happy marriage.

Which Japanese festival on 15 November celebrates children aged three, five and seven?

Shichi-Go-San, 'seven-five-three', sees girls of three and seven and boys of three and five dressed up and taken to Shinto shrines to give thanks for their growth.

Japanese travellers are expected to bring back omiyage for colleagues: gifts that typically take what form?

Regional foods, boxed in small portions to hand round, are the usual omiyage, and bringing them back for co-workers is a social obligation, even a form of apology for the absence.

The furoshiki, Japan's traditional gift-wrapping cloth, takes its name from which everyday place?

The bathhouse gave the cloth its name, literally 'bath spread': bathers are said to have bundled their clothes in crest-marked cloths, and the cloths caught on as Edo-period commoners took to public baths.

Besides the national anthem, played twice daily in public, which piece do Thai cinema audiences traditionally stand for before every film?

The royal anthem, Sansoen Phra Barami, was Siam's national anthem until the 1932 coup, whose leaders had a new one written for the people and kept the old song to honour the king.

In the Philippines, the mano greeting asks an elder's blessing by touching the back of their hand to what?

One's forehead is bowed to the elder's hand after asking permission with 'mano po'; the word comes from the Spanish for hand, and the gesture is a close cousin of hand-kissing.

On day two of the Hindu festival of Tihar, which animals are garlanded with flowers and marked with a tika?

Dogs, strays included, are fed and honoured on Kukur Tihar because Hindus regard them as messengers of Yama, the god of death; other days of the five-day festival salute crows, cows and oxen.

In which country is a young girl, the Kumari, worshipped as a living goddess until she reaches puberty?

Nepal's Kumari is chosen from the Newar community of the Kathmandu Valley as an embodiment of the goddess Taleju, who is believed to leave her body at her first period, when the search for a successor begins.

In Tibet's sky burial, what happens to the body?

Left on a mountaintop for vultures and other scavengers, the body is given back to nature; on much of the Tibetan plateau the ground is too hard for graves and wood too scarce for cremation.

On which Indonesian island are children named by birth order, so that a first-born is often called Wayan?

Bali's birth-order names run Wayan, Made, Nyoman and Ketut for the first four children, and a fifth child is often called Wayan Balik, 'Wayan again'.

The Toraja of Sulawesi hold Ma'nene, a ritual in which deceased relatives are exhumed and given what?

New clothes are put on the bodies once they have been washed and groomed, in a ritual whose name means 'cleansing of the corpses' and which families treat as a reunion with their dead.

On Finland's Sleepyhead Day, what happens to a celebrity chosen each year in Naantali?

Thrown into the sea, the chosen sleeper gets an old custom writ large: on this day, tied to the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, the last person in a household still in bed is woken with water.

Which crustacean is the centrepiece of Sweden's August kräftskiva parties, eaten under Man-in-the-Moon lanterns?

Crayfish were at risk of overfishing, so Sweden long limited the catch to a short season opening in August; the law has gone, but the parties, with their paper hats and bibs, have kept the date.

According to legend, why did Hungarians swear off clinking beer glasses after 1849?

Austrians toasted executed generals, the 13 Martyrs of Arad, by clinking beer mugs, or so the legend runs; historians have found no record of such a toast and doubt it ever happened.

The carnival in Ivrea, northern Italy, is famous for organised teams hurling what at one another?

Oranges fly in memory of a legendary revolt: the tale has a miller's daughter beheading the town's tyrant, and the teams on foot play the commoners against his men on the carts.

At El Colacho in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain, men dressed as the Devil leap over what, laid out on mattresses?

Babies born in the past year are laid out along the Corpus Christi procession route, and the leap of the Colacho, the village's devil figure, is meant to protect them from evil.

Basel's carnival opens at 4 am with the Morgestraich, a lantern parade that begins when what happens?

The street lights go out across the old town, so the only glow comes from the painted lanterns of the pipers and drummers; the carnival then runs for exactly 72 hours, to 4 am on Thursday.

Under Iran's taarof etiquette, what is a customer expected to do when a shopkeeper at first refuses payment?

Insist on paying, because the refusal is ritual courtesy, not a gift: an unwritten rule calls for two or three rounds of offer and refusal, and in the end the customer always pays.

The adumu, performed by young Maasai warriors at ceremonies, is a dance built around which movement?

Jumping straight up is the heart of the adumu, and the Maasai Olympics, set up so young warriors could prove themselves without killing a lion, copies it in a high jump where athletes leap to touch a raised rope.

Kofi Annan's given name follows an Akan custom in Ghana of naming a child after what?

The weekday of birth: Kofi is the Akan name for a boy born on a Friday, as Annan was in 1938, and enslaved Akan carried the custom across the Atlantic, where Kofi is a Friday name in Suriname's Sranan Tongo too.

In which country do families hold Famadihana, the 'turning of the bones', taking ancestors from the tomb to dance with them?

Madagascar's Famadihana sees families lift their ancestors onto their shoulders and dance them round the tomb to a live band, a show of respect for the dead that doubles as a family reunion.

On 25 December, residents of Peru's Chumbivilcas Province gather for Takanakuy, a festival built around what?

Fist fights to settle grudges do the work of courts in a remote province with little formal justice: villagers save up the year's disputes for Christmas Day, and the Quechua name means 'to hit each other'.