Six Unusual Traditions from Six More Places

Type the text exactly. Timer starts with your first key.

Text to type: The Night of the Radishes takes place every December 23 in Oaxaca, Mexico. A radish is a vegetable, but here it becomes material for art. People carve oversized radishes into scenes and compete for prizes. The tradition began with farmers who wanted to attract customers at the Christmas market in the main square. Their carved vegetables helped people notice what they were selling. The city started the formal competition in 1897. Timing matters because radishes wilt, or lose their fresh shape, soon after cutting. The works are shown for only a few hours, and visitors wait in very long lines. There are also works made from corn husks and dried flowers.

Ready. The timer starts with your first key.

Type the text exactly. Timer starts with your first key.

Text to type: The Olney Pancake Race happens in Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, on Pancake Day, also called Shrove Tuesday. The traditional runners are women. They wear a scarf and an apron and carry a frying pan along a course. They must toss their pancake at the start and the finish. The story behind the tradition goes back to 1445. A woman was busy making pancakes when she heard the church bells. She ran to church still carrying her pan and pancake. The race remembers that story through action. Since 1950, Olney and Liberal, Kansas, have held an International Pancake Day race and compared their times. A local tradition therefore also creates a connection between two places.

Ready. The timer starts with your first key.

Type the text exactly. Timer starts with your first key.

Text to type: In Gävle, Sweden, a giant goat made of straw stands at Castle Square in the centre of the city. It is a Yule goat, a goat figure connected with the Christmas season. Local community groups build it over two days at the beginning of Advent, the period leading up to Christmas. The first Gävle Goat appeared in 1966. Since 1986, there have been two goats: one built by the Southern Merchants and another by the Natural Science Club of the School of Vasa. Here, the main activity is building and displaying a seasonal figure. A new giant straw goat is put up every year at Castle Square in central Gävle.

Ready. The timer starts with your first key.

Type the text exactly. Timer starts with your first key.

Text to type: The Guérewol is a yearly courtship competition among the Wodaabe Fula people of Niger. Courtship means trying to attract someone as a possible partner. Young men wear rich decorations and traditional face painting. They stand in lines, dance, and sing to win the attention of young women. The dance is called the Yaake. The gathering happens when Wodaabe cattle herders meet at the southern edge of the Sahara before moving south for the dry season. These herders traditionally move from place to place with their animals. A main meeting place is In-Gall in northwest Niger, where there is a festival and a market. The Guérewol lasts about a week, bringing courtship and a seasonal gathering together.

Ready. The timer starts with your first key.

Type the text exactly. Timer starts with your first key.

Text to type: The Monkey Buffet Festival happens every year in Lopburi, Thailand, north of Bangkok. A buffet usually offers a range of food to choose from. Here, the food is for local crab-eating macaques, a kind of monkey. People give them fruit and vegetables, for example at the Phra Prang Sam Yod temple. Sometimes fruit is frozen inside blocks of ice. The activity centres on feeding the local monkeys, but sharing a town with them is not always simple. By 2024, Lopburi had about 3,000 monkeys. They caused problems for residents by taking bags, drinks, and food. The government started a campaign to catch monkeys and stop them from having babies.

Ready. The timer starts with your first key.

Type the text exactly. Timer starts with your first key.

Text to type: Beqa is an island in Fiji, about 10 kilometres south of the main island, Viti Levu. Several of Beqa’s nine villages are known for fire-walking. In this practice, people walk across hot stones. In Fiji, it is practised by the Sawau clan, a community group on Beqa. The approved accounts do not give one yearly date for this tradition. They do show its long history as something visitors came to see: it was already a tourist attraction in 1902. Fire-walking has different purposes around the world, including healing, faith, and entering adult life. Those general purposes do not establish one specific reason for Beqa’s practice. Here, we can identify a local tradition that also attracts visitors.

Ready. The timer starts with your first key.