10 Weirdest Festivals Around The World

10 Weirdest Festivals Around The World

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Festivals bring people together, serve as entertainment, and – most importantly – foster certain cultural aspects.
With millions of cultures across the globe, what might pass for a festival for some people might come off as a bit unsettling and downright ridiculous for others. From cow dung fights to baby jumping events, take a look at these 10 most weird festivals held around the world.
#10 Monkey Buffet Festival
Nope, this isn’t a festival for feasting on monkeys. On the contrary, the event is specifically held to treat macaque monkeys to more food than they know what to do with.
Taking place in Lopburi province in Bangkok, Thailand, the monkey buffet festival was first thought up by a local businessman as a way of boosting the tourist numbers. So since 1989 on every last Sunday of November, locals gather thousands of pounds of candies, fruits, and vegetables for the primates to enjoy.
The big feast is set up in 13th-century temple ruins, an indication that the ceremony is a little more than a PR gesture to attract tourists. Lopburi residents highly revere the monkeys and believe that the animals bring good luck and prosperity.
This reverence dates back to 2,000 years ago during the era of a divine prince called Rama. As the tale goes, the prince’s wife, Sita, had been captured by a demon lord and the prince was having a hard time rescuing her.
But lucky for Rama, monkey king Hanuman stepped in with his army and set the wife free.
#9 Battle of Oranges
Also known as the Carnival of Ivrea, the battle of oranges is Italy’s biggest food fight in which different opposing groups pelt each other with oranges. The event does turn bloody sometimes because, you know, getting hit by an orange isn’t exactly sweet.
For a larger part, though, the streets of Ivera are covered with fruit waste for the three days that the battle goes down. As you’d have guessed, it’s a lot of waste considering that 700 tons of oranges are swallowed up in the three-day food fight. Once it’s over, the orange remains are cleaned up and taken to a recycling center.
But what’s the point of all this? Why would the townspeople throw away so many oranges?
According to legend, the battle of oranges is held to commemorate the day the people of Ivrea town were liberated from tyrannical rule. As the story goes, the town’s ruler had a peculiar legal right that required him to sleep with young commoner women on the night before their wedding day.
But sometime in 1194, the bride-to-be wasn’t so comfortable with this outrageous idea. And when the duke attempted to have his way with her, she decapitated him, consequently setting off a revolution. The townspeople burned down the palace and engaged in a fierce battle with the duke’s army.
The orange fight is a recreation of this but with the weapons subbed with, of course, oranges.
#8 La Tomatina
La Tomatina in Spain is a modified version of the Italian battle oranges. Instead of oranges, the participants here hurl tomatoes at each other just for the fun of it. The origins, though, were anything but fun.
The first-ever such battle was in 1945 when a group of rowdy youth started a brawl in an event at Buñol’s town square in Valencia. The unrest escalated to a nearby market stall that had a good deal of tomatoes which the fighting groups didn’t hesitate to incorporate into their arsenal. The battle only ended after local forces stepped in.
The next year again, another fight broke up but this time it was intentional and the warring groups had brought their own tomatoes. Unknowingly, this was just the beginning of a decades-long festival that persists up to this day, every August on the last Wednesday.
Once free, the event organizers now charge prospective attendees a fee as a way of reducing the number of participants. Since 2013, the food fight can only accommodate 20,000 people down from 50,000 that would turn up before the ticketing system was introduced.
Compared to the Battle of Oranges, La Tomatina is significantly safer since participants are required to squash the tomatoes before hurling them at others.
#7 Baby Jumping Festival
The Baby Jumping Festival is another weird Spanish event, taking place annually in Castrillo de Murcia. The locals call it El Colacho and gather for four days straight, to either participate or just witness one of the most bizarre medieval rituals.
The festival has been around since 1620, taking place in mid-June, 60 days after Easter during the Feast of Corpus Christi.
In the weird event, the devil – clad in a red and yellow costume runs through the streets chasing down a group of youth who hurl insults at him. The devil on the other hand tries to whip them using a horsetail attached to a stick.