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