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Bun Day | |
February 13th, 2021 | |
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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. :) | |