As is tradition, this year “brodacze”, the “beardoes”, will be walking through the streets of Poland’s small town of Sławatycze. They have been doing this possibly for centuries, and nobody knows why, other than “my grandfather did this, and so did his father before him”.

21 comments

1. [removed]

2. People wear straw costumes and go out parading and going house to house over Christmas here in Ireland too https://youtu.be/53uFUqxS8Fg

3. Hold on … anyone else watched Farscape …getting flashbacks to Ka D’argo …

   https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0799402/mediaviewer/rm2254354432/

4. The custom is kukeri in Bulgaria, and we “remember” what it’s for: dressing like scary demons, to scare the real demons away. Outdevil the devils.

5. Very cool!!

6. Very similar to the caretos in Portugal.

7. Looks a bit like UK’s brexit team.

8. Romania also has the same tradition. At least some parts of Romania.

9. *Witcher fight music starts playing*

10. They look very much like zvončari (🇭🇷) / kurenti (🇸🇮), but they walk around during Carnival.

11. Love it!

12. Similar costumes are in Romania too, but we havent these big hats x).

13. There are [similar tradions](https://www.charlesfreger.com/portfolio/wilder-mann/) all over Europe. While some places may have origin stories about their traditions, I believe that those stories are made up later on and those traditions for wearing scary costumes already existed before the stories. Like initially their origin might come from the time of [this cave painting.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer_(cave_art))

14. hmmm.

    at least they’re warm. love the pantaloons.

15. What a bunch of Beardoes

16. We have groups of Wren boys in Ireland, dressed in straw outfits with conical head dress, they visit peoples homes on St Sephen’s day or [Wren Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day) (26th of December)

    [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hb_kfB7j4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hb_kfB7j4A)

17. Similar stuff existed in Germany, where some person dressed up as a monster as in the traditions of the historic **tribal people, before Christianity.**

    ​

    Was probably like a dress-up drinking party and new solar year celebration, instead of Jesus birthday with cake.

18. Similar to the Austrian [“Mullen” or “Matschgern”](https://www.freizeit-tirol.at/fileadmin/_processed_/a/2/csm_freizeit-tirol-rum-mullerumzug-56_36ff8590fe.jpg) i suppose? Here it’s to metaphorically “sweep” away the winter to allow for spring to arrive.

19. It looks like Kolyady in Belarus.

    http://ru.russki.lu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/AFP_1C19E2-1392×926.jpg

20. How old is this photo?

21. Nice Mercedes, Bro.