Next time you travel abroad, try to give the usual sightseeing a miss and you just might stumble upon some zesty and colorful local festivals. Sling on your camera and gulp down a double espresso because you won’t want to miss even a moment of fun that unfurls in front of you. From strutting naked to traveling in coffins, here are ways in which people celebrate top ten nutty festivals from around the world:
10. Floating Lanterns Festival in Honolulu, Hawaii
Held annually on Memorial Day on O?ahu’s south shore, Lantern Floating Hawaii brings together over 40,000 people on the beach, joined by thousands around the world via live streaming and telecast for an evening of honoring loved ones and generating collective hope toward the future.
Lantern Floating Hawaii is a ceremony where all can come together for a personal and collective moment of remembrance, reflection, and offering gratitude to those who have gone before us. It is a chance to be surrounded by the love, understanding, and support of others – even strangers. We are strengthened as a community as we reach out to support others and build understanding of our common values and experiences.
9. Baby-Jumping Festival
Villagers of Spain’s Castrillo de Murcia have taken baby blessing ceremonies to new “heights”. During the annual Corpus Christi, babies are laid down on a mattress for the ritual. Men in devil costumes jump over the babies for the little ones’ sin-cleansing, luck and good health. Recent papal orders have asked the local priests to stay away from the ritual that has been taking place since 1620.
8. Food-Throwing Festivals
Before heading to Spain, where people love throwing-festivals, let’s make a detour to Italy. The Ivrea orange festival started centuries ago when love-struck damsels in balconies threw oranges at suitors in parades. Soon the parade became an open-to-all orange slugfest which attracts tourists from world over.
Most of us know about the famous tomato-throwing La Tomatina fight of Bunol, Spain. But things don’t end with tomatoes in Spain. In Horo’s Batalla del Vino people arm themselves with barrels for a wine war and there is also an annual water fight in Alpujarras near Granada.
Spaniards who are not happy with food-throwing festivities celebrate their own fiestas: dead rats, ant, paint and tar are some objects hurled at these annual Spanish celebrations.
7. Hole-y Festivals
Chants, prayer songs and feasts almost make Thaipusam like other Hindu festivals held in honor of a deity from its huge pantheon of Gods. This Tamil festival takes a different turn when devotees start piercing their skin and face with skewers. The pain is looked up to as a test of endurance and love for Lord Murugun.
6. Naked Festival
January in Japan is as cold as in other northern parts of the hemisphere. But the freezing temperature does not deter thousands of men running in the streets with nothing but a loincloth on them. Hadaka Matsuri is a festival for ritual purification held in different forms across Japan. In Inazawa, men in loin cloths struggle to touch a naked man called Shin-otoko for good luck. These naked festivals are fun events but with undertones of spiritual significance.
5. Near-Death Experience Festival
Heading back to Spain again, we now come to Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme. This festival celebrates people who faced death and lived to tell the tale. In the small town of Las Nieves, this festival is held in honor of Santa Marta de Ribarteme, the patron saint of resurrection. On the day of celebration a parade is held in which the lucky survivors are carried in coffins to the cemetery and around the church. Offerings are made and blessings are sought by thousands of people who throng the small town every year.
4. Color-Throwing Festival
This is the only Hindu festival where people do not dress up for the occasion. In fact, the oldest of clothes are dug out from wardrobes in preparation for a huge color-throwing festival called Holi. In this spring festival associated with Lord Krishna, people play with colorful powders called gulal. Wet colors are also used in many parts of India. Food and drinks laced with a local cannabis plant called bhang are served during the festival feast.
3. Monkey Buffet Festival
As the name suggests, this festival is a huge feast laid down for primates of Lopburi, Thailand. Tons of fruits and vegetables are laid by devotees in honor of Hanuman, the monkey God. What follows next is absolute mayhem as hordes of monkeys swarm the site, start attacking the food piles and interacting with spectators. The festival over the years has become more lavish and has put this small province on the world tourism map.
2. Fish-Swallowing Festival
At the outset, let us make it clear that this is not your “regular” food festival. Yes, the festival involves consuming fish but the difference is that they are still alive! The last Sunday of every February, residents of Geraardsbergen in Belgium celebrate during the Krakelingen festival, which commemorates an unsuccessful siege of the city. Besides throwing bread rolls, the locals gulp down small wriggling gray fishes called grondeling soaked in red wine. The ceremony draws protests from animal rights activists who want to substitute live fish with fish-shaped marzipan.
1. Crying Baby Festival
Grossly overweight men with loincloths can be a very scary sight for many of us. So, you can imagine how babies will react when held by one of these men. In Konaki Sumo, a Japanese festival, pairs of babies are held by Sumo wrestlers facing each other. The winner is the baby who breaks down first. If the wrestlers were not traumatic enough, the crying winner is held aloft by parents and showered with camera flashes. The festival is based on the Japanese proverb “crying babies grow fast”. Wails, weeps and sobs, on this occasion, signify a blessing for good health.
7 Comments
Fantastic points altogether, you just received a new reader. What could you suggest in regards to your publish that you just made some days in the past? Any positive?
My goodness – that crying baby festival just isn’t right at all!
The information provided on the Indian festival “Holi” is wrong, and honestly insulting to an Indian person.
It is first of all not celebrated in honor of Lord Krishna, but actually in honor of Pralad bringing the end to the life of the king’s sister “Holika”.
Secondly, “bhang” has traces of opium in it.
Please verify what you publish online.
right it’s all wrong! we don’t take the oldest clothes out of the wardrobe but buy white clothes so that when we play with the colours, they are seen!
infact the title itself is WRONG ‘the colour throwing festival!’
I think the "Gathering Of The Juggalos" looks insanely unusual.
Very nice and informative images with description. Although the first image with "baby jumping festival" looks very crazy.
How about Machine Gun Shoots like Big Sandy or Knob Creek?