The Ghost of Danny, Fried Caterpillars and Bugmas

I found two Creepmassy South African Christmas traditions, but the references to them were only short blurbs in lists about weird holiday traditions.  Now it could be that no one is writing about them in English.  South Africa has 11 different official languages, which makes searching difficult even with translation tools.  But I found some Creepmas gold while I was digging, so it was worth the trip down the rabbit hole.

Alright so maybe these are legit traditions or maybe all the lists I read are repeating the same misinformation.  I would love to have someone confirm or deny, but until then, taken with a grain of salt...

The first tradition is the telling of the story of Danny the ghost.  He was a naughty little boy who ate the cookies set out for Santa and for this trespass he was beaten to death by his grandmother and now he haunts around Christmastime to discourage other would-be cookie thieves.  Again I only found references to this and none actually sited any sources. 

The second tradition is to eat Mopane worms, the caterpillars of Emperor moths for Christmas dinner.  I did find what seems to be an authentic reference and recipe at The African Gourmet.  That was the only one I found that mentioned Christmas, though there is no doubt that mopane worms are readily eaten in general, either dried as a snack or in stews as a meal.

This is a pretty good article on mopane worms.

This video shows the caterpillars being picked, the guts are then squeezed out and the skins are cooked until crispy.  A restaurant scene at the end shows the skins being cooked up with a sauce.

This video shows trying them both dried and reconstituted in a recipe.  I appreciate how she describes the flavors and textures, like you would expect someone to do when trying a new food and not being all weird about it, like I would be.  Also she mentions doing a thing she calls Bugmas...

…so of course I had to check out her channel emmymadeinjapan and Bugmas is counting down the last five days until Christmas by eating bugs.   She also changed it up and did Gutmas one year.  There's your Creepmas dinner menu all planned out.

I can't eat meat.  I don't care what animal it comes from, the smells, the textures and the flavors, they  make me gag.  I can't even eat fake meat that closely mimics the real stuff.  I'm even picky about how I prepare vegetables because of texture issues.  So people like this, that can objectively try anything, kind of amaze me. 

Funny caption picture aside, she really does take a neutral approach to trying different insects for Bugmas, no drama.  I like that she doesn't play up a gross out or shock angle, just an honest food review.

She also does a video on lutefisk and lefse which I guess are a thing here in the Midwest but I've never had them.  The lefse isn't gross, from what I understand it's like a potato crepe, but lutefisk sounds nasty.

When I was a kid, a common phrase used in conjunction with offering various foods that always looked as bad as they smelled, was "You should eat this, it'll put hair on your chest."   I'm curious now, do people say that outside the Midwest?  Is it a uniquely Wisconsin thing to say to an eight year old girl while offering her a jar of pickled* herring? Or was it just my weird family?

There was a time in my childhood that I actually enjoyed eating cheese curds dipped in horseradish, but it did not produced any chest hairs as promised.  

*Pickled things seemed very popular when I was a kid**.  I remember bars (or more correctly, taverns) always had large jars of pickled eggs and pickled pigs feet.  I never actually witnessed anyone eat the latter, but I always watched the consumption of pickle eggs with a sort of horrified fascination.  

**Yes as a kid in Wisconsin I spent a lot of time in bars, that's where everyone gathered after church and for Friday fish fry's.