In Poland, we have a "bizarre TV tradition" of watching Home Alone during Christmas on one of the main TV stations (Polsat). Usually Home Alone 2 is played the next day.<p>One year the station wanted to play a different movie during the holiday season and people wrote petition to bring it back.
Why is this bizarre? Most countries seems to have traditions relating to seasons. In the UK It's a Wonderful Life and The Snowman are iconic and broadcast every year.<p>Japanese traditionally eats KFC at Christmas. I'm sure most countries have quirks like these. They are harmless, they create a sense of togetherness and humans in general likes traditions and rituals. Considering how big especially Donald Duck is in Scandinavia, it seems natural that there would be a Christmas tradition that incorporates that.<p>The only bizarre thing is the condescending tone of the author.
There are several films that are probably streamed throughout the world during christmas.<p>One that I used to watch every year on cable TV here in Brazil when I was a child (you can guess I'm not that old) is "Jingle all the Way"[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_All_the_Way" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_All_the_Way</a>
Sweden has a bunch of lovely Christmas traditions. My favorite is this huge straw Christmas goat (Gavle bocken: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/gavlebocken/" rel="nofollow">https://www.instagram.com/gavlebocken/</a>)<p>Interestingly, there is (semi-)traditional vandalism to burn the sucker down every year: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat#Timeline" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat#Timeline</a><p>Hopefully he survives this year!
In France, when I was younger, it was on new year’s day (Well the night between the years) and a channel always runned Tex Avery cartoons.<p>Every year. Don’t know why or if it’s still true (not living in France)
It sounds as weird as watching Die Hard.<p>People are focused on cooking dinner and/or getting ready for the Christmas parties, it's not weird that some different customs will come up at that time.
What’s further confusing is that this is broadcast on state owned TV which is required to be ad-free. Yet, this section is riddled with ads for upcoming Disney movies.
I moved overseas 15 or so years ago, and when I left I felt that this tradition was already on the way out. As far as I understand, it's been going away even more since then, but I don't have much in the way of evidence.<p>When I wad a kid in the 80's, they barely ever showed any Disney cartoons on TV. This meant that the Disney on christmas tradition was a big thing. These days it's available everywhere so there is really nothing to drive the tradition, any i believe that the only ones who even care about it are my age.
It's not only Donald Duck, it's a random collection on Disney clips. The only "bizarre" thing about it, is that every year seconds are cut away as the removed clips are no longer considered politically correct.
It's nowhere near as common today as it was just a couple of years ago. Nobody I know watches it anymore, but everyone used to d it. Of course, it may just be our social circle.
That's funny. Sometimes we're quite irrational. We're still primates in some aspects (I mean no offense to Swedish, we all have strange traditions in our countries)
It is possible that will change when Disney starts selling their subscription service in Sweden.<p>Disney will likely use its huge archive to sell subscriptions.<p>That likely is the reason Home Alone isn’t on public tv in the Netherlands, as <i>tinus_hn</i> says in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21871486" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21871486</a><p>If they play it hard, a lot of traditional Christmas movies will move behind a paywall. For example, Die Hard and Jingle all the Way, commented on this page, all are from 20th Century Fox, which is Disney owned, as is The Sound of Music)