The thread Do little boys whip little girls and sing on Easter Monday got me wondering, what other ritual craziness is going on in the world that I’m unaware of?
So tell me, anyone out there celebrate bizarre holidays, enact strange rituals, or hold to inexplicable traditions?
I remember seeing a picture in a book called “The Circle of Life”, I believe, of a woman and man passing the woman’s pubescent son, stark naked, through a split-open sapling. The text, iirc, said they did this three times, then bound the tree back up again with an image of the Virgin Mary inside. I think this was in Italy.
The only thing I have to offer is that a certain group of friends I knew in college used to drive up to Baltimore every October 6th carrying no luggage and wearing thrift-shop clothes, to get knee-walking drunk in commemoration of the death of Edgar Allan Poe. They allegedly spent the evening bar-hopping, and shouting snippets of “The Raven” at anyone who made eye contact in the street, sometimes getting involved in stereophonic recitations of the entire poem with said onlooker. At some point in the wee hours of October 7th, they began shouting “Reynolds!”