‘What’s the strangest tradition you’ve encountered in someone else’s home?’ – 22 examples to make your family look positively sane

Are you feeling some residual trauma after spending Christmas with your nearest and dearest? Do they always seem weirder than you remember when you spend an extended an amount of time with them?

Don’t worry, there are always going to be families out there far stranger than yours. Reddit user Signal_Labrador asked the following question…

‘What’s the strangest family tradition you’ve encountered when visiting someone else’s home?’

And the answers will have you thanking your lucky stars that your loved ones aren’t as odd as these people.

1.

‘Instead of praying, a full family recital of the Addams family theme song before meals. They were wonderful people and foster parents.’
–Pickle_4395

2.

‘It was s Sunday. My family was visiting church friends because they had kids the same age as us. We were sent to the basement where we sat. We did nothing.

‘They had a rule that you couldn’t watch TV, listen to music, read, or even do homework on Sunday. We were that bored we asked about homework! They literally sat and did nothing on Sunday after church. We never went back. I think my parents even thought it was a little weird.’
–Jealous-Enthusiasm-9

3.

‘My friend’s mom used to sit on people’s heads while they were on the couch and fart. Horrified the first time I witnessed this, my friend said ‘haha, she does that, it’s her thing’. Never encountered it again and it is not, in fact, a thing.’
–Silent-Condition-628

4.

‘Eating dessert before dinner because ‘life’s too short’.’
–Doll_Honey4

5.

‘After dinner you go and watch Dad crack the whip. Literally just cracking a whip. At first I thought it was weird but, actually it’s kinda cool to watch so shrug.’
–smollbutmaytee

6.

‘Licking the plates clean after having dinner, but the plates were see through glass ones.’
–Humanbeansontoast

7.

‘My great aunt in Scotland had a sitting room with glass doors blocking it off from the rest of the house. White furniture, white carpet, dark wood, plastic covering everything, including the lamp shades.

‘No one was allowed in there, she was saving it in case the Queen or the Pope stopped by for tea.’
–CptDawg

8.

‘My wife and I would occasionally have dinner with this family who had a large dog. While eating dinner they would all stick a piece of food between their own teeth and get the dog to eat it out of their mouth.

‘All of them. It was some weird trick they taught the dog and did it every dinner. They asked us to do it too, which was even weirder.’
–delivery85

9.

‘I would not call this tradition, but I went over to someone’s house in the summer(when I was a kid) and for breakfast, they brought their son the food from the previous night’s dinner that he didn’t eat. They had blended it in a blender and heated it up for him. Was spaghetti or something.

‘His Mom said, ‘We don’t know how you do things in your house, but in our house when we pray over the food, we have to eat all of the food.’ I can’t explain it adequately, but it was creepy.’
–Mahaloth

10.

‘On the first day of winter they’d all (three kids and both parents) eat ice cream for dinner, with milkshakes to drink. Needless to say I was very happy to be invited several times.’
–LemmingOnTheRunITG

11.

‘I had Thanksgiving with a family who took me in once. They did a turkey parade Thanksgiving morning. Where they took the turkey through each room in the house saying ‘turkey parade’.’
–h-bugg96