Noche de Rabanos is Spanish for “Night of the Radish.” It may sound like a low-budget horror movie, but tourists don’t have to worry about giant radioactive tubers terrorizing the populace. It’s a Christmas tradition, actually, with a little Halloween thrown in for an extra dash of holiday flair. And as you may have already surmised, radishes are heavily involved. Although they’re not for eating.
Just as Americans like to carve scary faces into pumpkins every late October, artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico, enjoy taking a knife to deface vegetables on December 23. But instead of limiting themselves to crooked smiles, triangular eyes, and such, the creations on display during the Night of the Radish are much more intricate. They can represent anything from a nativity scene (the most popular, unsurprisingly) to the wild animals that populate the countryside—and hopefully some awesome combination of the two where the lambs and donkeys in the manger are accompanied by venomous snakes and toothy crocodiles. Actually, that might get someone in trouble, so we would advise against commissioning one of those for your holiday centerpiece.
Come for the Anthropomorphic Radishes, Stay for the Ants
The Mexican state of Oaxaca is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the country, in terms of the number of animal species. So in addition to wildlife-themed radishes, there are also lots of local culinary options such as rabbit mole, grilled intestines, and winged ant tacos.
The very first official Noche de Rabanos took place in 1897, after the mayor of Oaxaca, Mr. Francisco Vasconcelos Flores, recognized how popular the practice of artistically mutilating radishes had become and set aside a day to engage in such activities. As legend has it, radish carving started when two Spanish friars gathered up some of the goofier-looking radish specimens after a particularly bumper harvest and brought them into town, billing them as “demons” and “monsters.” Since radishes had only recently been introduced to the area by European colonists (along with a bunch of fancy new diseases), they were still something of a novelty and attracted a lot of attention. Merchants got the bright idea of carving them into entertaining figures to entice people into their shops, and things just snowballed from there. As much as anything can snowball in Central Mexico, that is. Soon everyone from young children to lonely farmers got involved in making radish dioramas, radish people, and radish critters.
Nowadays the celebration is more popular than ever, with prizes and even diplomas (as an incentive to “keep their talent and heritage”) handed out to the winners of three different categories (the best carved radish wins a grand prize of 12,000 pesos). The radishes themselves are larger than the normal variety and are not intended for human consumption. So any hope of everyone in town frolicking inside a giant bowl of salad to end the festivities probably isn’t in the cards.
If you were worried about getting bored at seeing radish after radish cut up to look like the baby Jesus, rest assured there’s plenty of other stuff. There’s also an “Immortal Flowers” competition and an event where people make figures out of corn husks. While religious themes dominated the entries of the past, today one will see Mayan imagery, characters from movies, and other pop culture references among the obligatory plant-based Virgin Marys.
The Column of Death
While traveling around Oaxaca, be sure to stop by the Zapotec archaeological area known as Mitla and give a big hug to the Column of Death. But only if you’re prepared for some potentially bad news. It’s said that when someone wraps their arms around it and feels the structure move, it means that the Reaper is coming for you soon.
According to reports, lines to view the radishes can stretch for miles, which might make the hour you spent standing around at Disney World just so your daughter could spend five seconds with a teenager in a Princess Elsa costume seem a lot more reasonable. So if you want to gawk at the misshapen red tubers yourself, you might want to arrive early. Ideally, five days early, so you can catch the feast of the patron saint of Oaxaca, Our Lady of Solitude. And what’s this celebration all about? you ask. Well, according to another legend, in 1620, a mule driver was traveling through Oaxaca on the way to Guadalajara when he suddenly discovered he had an extra mule in his train. This mule happened to be carrying an unusually large box—so heavy that it caused the mule to collapse and die. Inside was a statue of Our Lady of Solitude. Instead of putting it on trial for mule murder, the people of the region took it as a sign of great portent and immediately set about building a shrine, then a church, and then a whole basilica to worship the statue. Visitors today can go to the entrance and see a boulder that marks the exact spot where the mule died. After all that, spending a night looking at a bunch of carved radishes probably won’t seem strange in the slightest.