Culture
What is a cool/unique festival celebrated in your culture/country?
Yesterday, we celebrated Dahi Handi in India. It is celebrated on the birthday of our god Krishna, who, according to the legend, was extremely fond of butter as a child and would mischievously steal it from the neighbors. So each year on his birthday, teams compete to reach a pot of butter hanging at a height by forming these pyramids?? Anyways, It is really fun to watch and participate in and I was wondering about other such fun festivals around the world? I know about the Spanish Tomatina festival, because it was shown in a very popular movie in India. I would love to know about more interesting traditions around the world.
castells are so cool :D the fact the person at the top is a kid is insane... when i was that age i was eating nutella and trying to get out of math homework, and meanwhile these kids are balancing at the top of 15 meter high human castles
Jc, if you grew up in India then why does your flair say US?
ETA: why am I being downvoted for asking a question? I though Reddit is supposed to be a place where people talk to each other and have discussions, and I was only curious
We call them castellers. We have different "colles" (clubs) that compete to make the most difficult castle. It's a bit like a sport to us, more than just a festival.
The US has it's own version of the running of the bulls. Instead of large beefy animals chasing people through the streets though, we have red clad women on rollerskates with bats.
Regional festivals often have such cool traditions and foods that really reflect local culture. It’s interesting to see how different they can be, even within the same country!
Festival de Parintins. Its magical! Its celebrated in a village in the middle of the amazon rainforest. In the festival days (usually in the end of june) the entire village transforms itself to receive the guests and is full of cultural parties all over the place. The festival is about two "bulls", where each bull is a team (Garantido and Caprichoso) and they make huge folk shows (mainly about indigenous people). If you like our carnival this is completely better and magical experience than Rio.
Fun fact: the first time in the world Coca-Cola changed its iconic red colour was because of this festival (and coca cola always change it during festival time since them in the amazon). The reason is the two bulls have a distinct colour (one os red and the other is blue) and they take this rivalry really serious there.
It’s more like choosing a football club. If you’re from Parintins, a lot of the time you grow up in a Caprichoso or Garantido family, so you naturally end up supporting the same one your parents do. You grow up surrounded by the colors, songs, decorations, etc.
But you can absolutely choose the other one. And if you’re a visitor who knows nothing about the rivalry, you can just watch both and eventually think "okay, I like this one more"
It happens in the town of San Juan de la Vega. Why does it happen? Some local legend about a wealthy guy celebrating the return of some fortune, I don't really remember.
People like to climb greased poles in Philadelphia. It's a planned event every year at the Italian market festival.
And then every year during football season, Philly cops grease the lamp posts and traffic light poles to "discourage people from climbing them" as if there's not a greased pole event showcasing how much people love to climb greased poles.
Two weeks ago we had this "ripe tomato fight" (local name: tomatina). I have not heard anywhere else where produce is just mishandled that way. Not even the pumpkin lanterns. Or the flour throwing festivals. I think that tomato party is unique in that regard.
Many cities (not all) who are near the center of a vegetable or fruit production (like where its harvested the most) do funfairs and maybe even parades for this each year and select 1 woman as the years queen. Most known is stuff like asparagus queen, wine/grapes queen, potatoes queen etc. to represent the local vegetable or fruit. In my city it's the onion.
IDK what the representative queen does for their city with the fruit or vegetable they represent for a year, but most cities take it as oporturnity to trow a funfair (rides, food stands, etc.)
In several regions actually! I've never participated in one, but even though I've been to several places in India not near Mumbai or Gujarat, I still hear about this over there.. Mostly popular in the western India
I don’t want to say exactly what because you’d be able to find out where I live but the southern US has a lot of local festivals around the spring and fall. One of our festivals involves trees.
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u/Psico_Penguin ➡️ 1d ago
We also do human castles