TikTok reveals the ‘brown goo’ tradition for single women in Denmark on their 25th birthday

If you’re a woman and single on your 25th birthday, Denmark has a rather unique tradition to mark it.

In a viral TikTok, Kelly Louise Killjoy has revealed that it’s not uncommon to see piles of brown goo on the streets at the foot of a tree, and this is all down to 25th birthdays.

Danish TikToker Kelly explained that, if a woman is unmarried when she turns 25, her friends and family will tie her to a tree or a post, cover her in water and then throw a lot of cinnamon on them.

She explained: “Well, of course, because if you’re not married by the age of 25 in Denmark - which is already an impossible standard - your friends and your family will tie you to the nearest pole, pour water all over you, and then cover you in cinnamon.”

The tradition is apparently commonplace in the Nordic country and is seen as a rite of passage.

Some, she demonstrated with footage, even get creative with it and use contraptions like leaf blowers to completely cover the birthday girl in cinnamon.

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According to Kelly, the cinnamon shower stems from another tradition that happens when you turn 30 and are unmarried, where pepper is used.

This, she explains, is because the Danish words “pebersvend” and “pebermø” are used to refer to unmarried 30-year-olds and directly translate to “pepper bachelor” and “pepper maiden”.

The cinnamon tradition apparently started because “a friend group once didn’t want to wait until their 30th birthdays to… spice each other up.”

She also explained: “How much you get depends heavily on the morals of your friends – you can get a dash of pepper, or you can get wrecked.”

The viral TikTok has been viewed 4.3 million times and Kelly ended with a warning that dry spices are extremely flammable, so don’t do it near an open flame!