11 People Share Their Strangest Family Traditions

Everyone thinks their family has the weirdest family traditions—until you hear about other people’s family traditions. And woof! We recently learned about some pretty interesting ones in a Reddit thread titled “What are your WTF family traditions?” Here are some of the strangest ones:

  1. Slapping the Turkey

    “Whenever we make a turkey or goose for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have to slap it. I don’t know why. The slapping takes place when the turkey is in the roasting pan, you just slap it with moderate force, about the force you would use to slap a fly or mosquito on your leg. Whenever I asked my Grandmom, she would sing “it’s tradition!” and never answer the question beyond that.”

  2. A Unique Christmas Tree Topper

    “My mother has always put a cow puppet on top of the Christmas tree instead of an angel.”

  3. The Test Potato

    “Whenever anyone of us has to take an exam, they take a single uncooked potato with them. This has been tradition ever since my Grampa found one in his pocket after acing his driving test. We’re not a particularly superstitious family otherwise, but The Potato has proven itself indispensable.”

  4. Eating the Last Fry

    “It’s more between my brother and I than our whole family. Whenever we’d eat at a fast food place we would play “The last fry”, and it was just that, the one that ate the last fry won. Sometimes we’d hide it for hours then eat it and say “MMMM IT TASTE SOOOO GOOD WHEN ITS THE LAAAAAST FRY!!!” One time I put my fry in my backpack and found it a couple weeks later, totally won that time.”

  5. Dance Before Presents

    “Every year on Christmas before we could open anything my dad used to make us do the Ninja Turtles Dance. He would take lead and my sister and I would have to do it behind him while my mom recorded it. Thinking back I find it hilarious.”

  6. Shots for Grandma

    “My great grandma used to do body shots off of babies. Whenever a family member would come over with their baby, my great grandma would check to see if the soft spot on their head had closed up. If it hadn’t, she’d put tequila on the soft spot and suck it off of our heads. She did it apparently to close the hole faster, because evil spirits come in from that hole and she believed that it took them out. Some of my aunts still do this.”

  7. An Aunt Fighting Match

    “The aunts fight. I mean like literally fight. They will get wasted and just get louder and louder and then one will shout something along the lines of, ‘You want to back that up?’ and then they will go outside and fight. We all watch and cheer for our favorite aunt to win and sometimes we will even video tape the fight so that we can watch it later and laugh about it. It is pretty normal.”

  8. Wolf Pack

    “My brother-in-law thought the “three wolf moon” shirts were hilarious so he bought one. My husband also thought it was funny so he bought one with more wolves on it (to up the ante). My sister and I then bought a wolf shirt for my dad so he could fit in with the guys. They wear these shirts in public when they are all together and call themselves the “wolf pack.” My parents even named their boat “three wolf moon.” My sister and I are both due to have little boys this winter. We are on the hunt for wolf onesies…”

  9. A Graveyard Christmas Eve

    “In my family, we go to the graveyard on Christmas Eve and pour the dead relatives favorite drinks on their gravestones. I am from Denmark.”

  10. Just One Bunny Ear

    On Easter we used to eat a bunny cake with only one ear, because my Uncle ran away once as a little kid, and he took the ear with him. He came back a few hours later when everyone was looking for him having already eaten the ear.”

  11. Stealing Dogs

    “Hound stealin’. It’s close to sacrilege in our family, but that doesn’t stop us. Our dogs (two whippets and a Treeing Walker coon hound) sleep in our beds with us, and on cold winter nights we’ll sometimes sneak into each other’s rooms and steal a dog out from under the covers and carry them to our own beds. By sometimes I mean every single night.”

What’s a weird tradition your family practices?