German island’s controversial Christmas tradition with women is finally banned | World | News
A bizarre Christmas tradition which has been going on since for nearly 200 years in Germany has finally been banned. The Klaasohm festival on Borkum Island, which lies near the German border with the Netherlands on the North Sea coast, dates back to the 1830s.
The festival takes place on December 5, on the eve of St Nicholas Day on December 6, otherwise known as the Feast of Saint Nicholas, in honour of the patron saint who is the inspiration for Father Christmas. St Nicholas Day is celebrated in many Western Christian countries in various ways. In Germany children put out a boot overnight and it is filled with sweets ‘by St Nicholas’ if the child has been good over the past year, or there is a stick left in the boot, if the child is deemed to have been naughty.
However, on Borkum Island, which lies around 250 miles from the coast of East Anglia, there has also been a very different tradition involving adults on the night before the more wholesome feast day.
Known as the Klaasohm festival, the tradition involved six young unmarried men dressing in bizarre bovine-like costumes who would then seek out women on the island to hit them on the buttocks with a cow horn.
However, when footage of a woman being hit on the bottom by a man with a horn was filmed on German ARD television in 2023 the public and authorities expressed outrage.
Following reports of aggressive behaviour by some men towards women the association that organised the festival, known as the Borkum Boys Association, said the practice would be scrapped and it would no longer tolerate violence against women.
Speaking in 2024 when the ban came into force, the island’s mayor, Jürgen Akkermann, said that the violence had developed from “a tradition of a kind of chastisement” of people who approach the “Klaasohms”, men dressed up in masks, sheepskin and feathers, without permission.
He said that, following earlier incidents, a rethinking had already started over the past decade, but the matter hadn’t been pursued emphatically enough until now.
According to German broadcaster NDR, the festival was celebrated this year, but without any cow horn-related violence against the female population of the island. Speaking ahead of the event on Friday night mayor Akkermann added: “We hope to experience a wonderful Klaasohm.”
The festival involves six young men dressed as Klaasohms who still rampaged around Borkum on Friday but without any incident, according to local police. The Klaasohms ended their run around town by leaping off a pillar constructed in the town into the waiting crowd, similar to a rock star attempting to crowd-surf from a stage.
