The Strange—But Beloved—Christmas Tradition Where a Log “Poops” Presents

The cultures of the world have many Christmas traditions, from raising a carp in your bathtub to watching one specific 1958 Donald Duck cartoon. But did you know about the Catalonian custom of Tió de Nadal? The name translates as “Christmas log,” but it is also known as the “s**t log” or the “poop log.”

The Poop Log

In the two-and-a-half weeks leading up to Christmas, Catalan families will keep a log in the home with a face painted on it. The log is not made of poop. It is made of wood, like most logs. But it represents a character who will poop out treats come Christmas day.

Children will sing to the log:

Caga tió, tió de Nadal
No caguis arengades
Que són massa salad
Caga torrons
Que són més bons!

This translates as:

S**t log, log of Christmas
Don’t s**t out herring
It’s too salty
Shit out turrón candies
They are much better!

To get the log to defecate as prompted, children will pretend to feed it scraps of food and then beat it with sticks. This practice is known as fer cagar el tió, or “make the log s**t.” When Christmas does come, small presents will sit below the propped-up log, as though having been squeezed out of it. These presents will include the requested turrón candies.

This all might sound like we deliberately invented the most ridiculous custom we could think of. But when we break this down, little about the Tió de Nadal is so different from what we’d consider normal Christmas behavior. 

We All Love Christmas Logs

You may not have previously heard of anthropomorphic logs who poop out treats, but you’ve surely heard of Christmas logs generally, which are otherwise known as yule logs. The poop log derives from that same tradition. 

People celebrating Christmas have burned yule logs for almost a thousand years. People celebrating winter have fixated on logs for even longer than that. The custom comes from earlier pagan rites. Trees represented fertility and health, and logs were in any case an obvious centerpiece for any kind of winter celebration for the simple reason that burning a log is a great way to stay warm. 

Hitting for Gifts

The part of Tió de Nadal where children beat their long-suffering friend may sound strange and even sadistic. But let’s remember the other Spanish custom that’s become well known enough that we all know about it and consider it normal: the piñata. 

In Spain, piñatas were not originally associated with birthday parties but with the first Sunday of Lent. Beating a piñata marked the period leading up to Easter, much as beating the poop log marks the period leading up to Christmas. When the piñata tradition came to Mexico, Mexicans associated it with the winter solstice. 

Even before it was ever a Spanish custom, there was a similar New Year custom in China, in which people would beat a clay ox to ensure a good harvest. Clearly, everyone’s holiday plans should involve beating an effigy of some kind. It’s far less unpleasant than the other holiday childhood custom of beating each other. 

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The Countdown to Christmas

When we said the poop log goes up two and a half weeks before Christmas, that might have sounded humorously arbitrary. But lots of cultures embrace the idea of counting down to Christmas Day. 

Christianity has Advent, which starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. For simplicity’s sake, commercial Advent calendars often start on a single standard date instead, December 1. Store promotions also count down with the Twelve Days of Christmas—which traditionally refer to the 12 days following Christmas, but this is another example where people prefer building to the Christmas climax.

Tió de Nadal goes up on December 8 because that’s the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It celebrates the day Mary was conceived, which was nine months before she was born. The day is not directly connected to Christmas (despite what many people think, the Immaculate Conception does not refer to the birth or conception of Jesus or to Mary being a virgin), but it conveniently does pop up so close to Christmas that it can work as the start of the Christmas season. 

Those Turrón Candies

The turróns that children request are a type of nougat candy. The basic type is made from eggs, honey, and whole almonds, while variations might contain chocolate or fruit. Other presents will appear beneath the log as well, but turróns are an essential treat here. 

Turróns were treasured even more in times past. One 1582 accounting document from the Spanish municipality of Alicante said, “From time immemorial, every year, it has been customary for Christmas to pay salaries partly in money and partly in a gift that is given to them, of an arroba of turróns.” The arroba is the @ symbol and was used to represent 25 pounds of weight. 

An 1587 letter from Spain’s King Philip commanded that cities limit the amount they spent on this nougat to 50 pounds of currency a year, in the name of fiscal responsibility. 

The Logic of Poop Exchange

We might never convince you it’s normal to pretend those yummy sweets you’re eating came out of someone’s butt. We will point out, though, that this association between Christmas and poop isn’t unique to Tió de Nadal.

Catalonia itself also has the caganer, a ceramic figure of a pooping man that goes in Nativity scenes. This might sound sacrilegious to you if you think Nativity scenes are always manger scenes of Jesus’s birth, but they can also depict an entire city, and the caganer will be doing his business somewhere outside.

Either way, the birth scene is supposed to appear down-to-earth. There are animals in that stable, animals who poop, so we should welcome any reminder that this is all happening in the dirty real world. 

With the poop log, the family spends the pre-Christmas period taking care of it instead of burning it, like they do most logs. Pooping out candy is its way of paying you back. It does not emit warmth, the way burning logs do, so it emits something the only other way it can. 

So, keep in mind that Christmas traditions come in all forms. Decades ago, South Park tried to make fun of Christmas specials by imagining the most absurd and disgusting Christmas character possible, Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo. Despite what they thought, maybe that wasn’t so absurd or disgusting after all.