| ---------------------------------------- | |
| Bun Day | |
| February 13th, 2021 | |
| ---------------------------------------- | |
| Monday is Bun Day here in Iceland. Bollur, the buns of the day, | |
| are sort of like cream puffs. Folks get jams and whipped cream and | |
| mix them together and stuff the buns to overflowing, then smother | |
| them in chocolate sauce. It's a healthy time! | |
| There's also a super-duper Icelandic tradition with bun day that | |
| many parents choose to not teach their kids. Early on Monday | |
| morning children in the know will wake up early, sneak into their | |
| parents' bedroom and WHACK WHACK WHACK them in their bed with | |
| sticks! However many whacks they get in before the parents get up | |
| is how many buns they get. Lovely! | |
| Following Bun Day is a sort of Fat Tuesday-like holiday that | |
| involves gorging yourself on all sorts of special foods that are | |
| terrible for you. I forget the name of that one, but it's nice | |
| too. | |
| Finally we get to Ash Wednesday. Here in Iceland Ash Wednesday is | |
| the costume & candy holiday. Halloween is a relatively recent | |
| phenomenon here and not very popular mostly because they already | |
| have most of those traditions at the start of lent. Kids dress up | |
| in all sorts of costumes, go to school that way, and then later go | |
| around begging for candy. But here they don't go to individual | |
| homes and say "trick or treat". Instead they go to businesses and | |
| sing songs for their treats! If you head downtown to Reykjavik on | |
| Wednesday you'll see this in full swing. It's really cute and so | |
| strange to see bank-branded popcorn bags and the like. | |
| Needless to say the next 3 days are pretty much party-time for the | |
| kids. No school work will get done and that's a joy in itself. | |
| Everyone is going to be on a crazy sugar rush. Good for them. :) | |