50 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, so the soles are kept from pointing at others when sitting on the floor, and pointing a dangling foot at someone older or of higher status gives real offence.

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, is not a custom in Japan and may be politely refused by staff?

Tipping is not a custom in Japan; where a charge for service exists it is fixed or built into the price, so coins placed on the table mostly puzzle the waiter.

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 or footwear jingle with every rhythmic step of a Morris side, whose dancers may also wave handkerchiefs or clash sticks and swords.

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; her spread of tea, scones and small cakes filled the hours between an early lunch and a fashionably late supper.

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.

Under the traditional Korean age system, scrapped by law in 2023, how old was a baby counted as at birth?

One was the starting age because the count is of calendar years lived, and everyone then gained a year together at New Year, so a late-December baby could be two within days. South Korea switched to international age on 28 June 2023.

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

Sweets filled the cone so completely that its other name is Zuckertüte, 'sugar cone'; these days crayons, small toys and books crowd out some of the chocolate.

Which song, sung early in the morning to wake the birthday person, is Mexico's traditional birthday serenade?

Las Mañanitas, credited to composer Alfonso Esparza Oteo, is also the serenade of choice for courting women, and Pedro Infante's version in Nosotros los pobres made it famous.

How many months does the Ethiopian calendar have, the last of them only five or six days long?

13 months come from twelve of exactly thirty days plus a short thirteenth made of the leftover days, and the year count runs seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar.

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

Anzac Day two-up honours the diggers who played it in the trenches, and for decades it was illegal at all other times, which only encouraged the 'two-up schools' that flourished while police turned a blind eye.

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.

At what age does Rumspringa, the Amish period of freedom before deciding on baptism, normally begin?

16 is when Amish youth begin Rumspringa, which ends only when they choose baptism into the church or leave the community; Wenger Mennonites run theirs between 17 and 21.

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 tip is pressed or rubbed against it as a gesture of affection, very often towards 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, the salt once being the most expensive thing a host could give an awaited visitor.

On Koningsdag, 27 April, the Dutch government lets citizens do what in the street without a permit or VAT?

The right to sell used goods on the pavement creates the vrijmarkt, or 'free market'; a 2011 ING survey found one in five Dutch residents planned to set up a stall.

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 sells about 60% of its annual supply around Pepero Day and shifts roughly 84 times the usual daily volume on the day itself.

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, and the first public holiday in its name was observed on 24 June 2022.

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 an Old Slavonic word for writing.

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 eat for breakfast on their birthday, in honour of the mother who ate it after giving birth?

Seaweed soup, miyeok-guk, is eaten by new mothers for months after childbirth, a practice said to date to the Goguryeo period after people noticed whales eating seaweed once they had calved.

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, are exchanged 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, as its name spells out?

Shichi-Go-San, 'seven-five-three', marks girls at three and seven and boys at five, who are dressed up and taken to shrines to celebrate their growth and well-being.

How many times is the year rung out at Japanese temples on New Year's Eve, one toll per worldly desire in Buddhism?

108 tolls answer the 108 bonnō, the worldly desires or kleshas of Buddhism; the custom came from Song-dynasty Zen temples in China and reached Japanese Zen temples in the Kamakura period, when bells were rung 108 times morning and evening.

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

Regional foods in neat packages are what omiyage means, 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, 'bath spread', from visitors bundling their belongings in crest-marked cloths at the baths; the habit spread as Edo-period commoners took to public bathing.

Before every film screening in Thailand, audiences stand for which piece of music?

The royal anthem, Sansoen Phra Barami, plays before each film and before plays, musicals and concerts too, and was first recorded on phonograph cylinder by a Siamese theatre troupe visiting Berlin in 1900.

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 Nepal's Tihar festival, which animals are garlanded with marigolds and marked with a tika?

Dogs, strays included, are honoured on Kukur Tihar with food and garlands, while other days of the five-day festival salute crows, cows and oxen and the bond between brothers and sisters.

In Nepal, the Kumari venerated as a living goddess is a prepubescent girl chosen from which community?

The Newar of the Kathmandu Valley supply the Kumari, seen as an embodiment of the goddess Taleju; the Kumari of Kathmandu from 2017 to 2025 was Trishna Shakya.

In Tibet's sky burial, a funeral practice shared with parts of Qinghai and Sichuan, what happens to the body?

Left on a mountaintop for vultures and other scavengers to consume, the body is returned to nature in a rite that parallels the Zoroastrian exposure of the dead on dakhma towers.

In Bali, a first-born child is commonly given which name, one of a fixed set tied to birth order?

Wayan means 'eldest' and shares the first-born slot with Putu and Gede (or Ni Luh for a girl); most Balinese use no family name, so the birth-order name is how people address one another.

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

New clothes are put on the washed and groomed bodies, which families treat with the same seriousness as rites for the living; Torajans keep death rituals and life rituals strictly apart.

On Finland's Sleepyhead Day, 27 July, what happens to a celebrity chosen each year in the town of Naantali?

Thrown into the sea from the town's port at 7 am, the chosen sleeper wakes up the hard way in a custom that grew from a medieval belief tied to the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

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

Crayfish parties date from the decades when the Swedish harvest was legally limited to late summer, and the accessories still run to novelty hats, moon lanterns and bibs.

Why do many Hungarians avoid clinking glasses when drinking beer, a custom traced to events of 1849?

Austrians toasted executed generals, the 13 Martyrs of Arad, by clinking beer glasses, says the legend, and Hungarians answered by refusing to clink theirs, a habit still widespread today.

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

Oranges fly between nine pedestrian teams and crews on carts in the Battle of the Oranges; the oldest team, the Asso di Picche, was founded in 1947.

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 lie on the mattresses in a custom dating from 1620, while the 'devils' in red and yellow suits brandish whips and oversized castanets as they go.

Basel's Fasnacht carnival opens with the Morgestraich at precisely what time on the Monday after Ash Wednesday?

4:00 am sharp is when lantern-carrying pipers and drummers begin exactly 72 hours of carnival, which ends on Thursday morning at the very same hour.

Under Iran's taarof etiquette, what must a customer typically do three times before a shopkeeper will quote a price?

Insist on paying is the customer's part after the shopkeeper declares the item 'unworthy' of them; only then does real haggling begin, though city sellers often skip the dance.

In the Maasai adumu, the dance performed by young warriors standing in a circle, what do the men take turns doing?

Jumping straight up, as high as possible with the body held rigid, is the whole point of the adumu, whose name is thought to come from a Maasai verb meaning 'to jump' or 'to leap'.

Ghana's Kofi Annan and Kwame Nkrumah both carry Akan 'day names', which record what about a child?

The weekday of birth is fixed in the name, Kwame marking a boy born on Saturday (Memeneda), and such day names also turn up among leaders of Caribbean slave rebellions.

How often do families in Madagascar usually hold Famadihana, the 'turning of the bones' that rewraps their ancestors?

Every five to seven years the bodies come out of the family crypt to be rewrapped, their names rewritten on the new shrouds, in a gathering that reunites even estranged relatives.

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

Fist fights to settle grudges give the day its Quechua name, 'to hit each other', and the bouts, framed by dancing, are defended locally as a way to clear old conflicts before the new year.