Radish carvings from the Noche de Rabanos festival in Oaxaca, Mexico

Dear Readers, you may well be asking what on earth radishes have to do with Christmas – after all, here in the UK they are very much a summer delicacy, served on a platter with some mayonnaise. But in Oaxaca, Mexico, the Noche de Rábanos (Night of the Radishes) on 23rd December is one of the festive highlights of the year, with queues around the block to see what people have created. Because the carvings only last for a couple of hours before the radishes discolour and wilt, there is even more competition to get in to see the best ones.

In the beginning, the radishes were carved to attract the attention of customers to the annual Christmas market in Oaxaca – many of the goods sold were the work of the local woodcarvers, so it was only a short hop to knocking up a few radish sculptures. The competition was inaugurated by the local council in 1897, and quickly became a huge hit – such a huge hit, in fact, that the council released more land for the growing of radishes, and began a programme of distributing the vegetables equitably to competitors. Nowadays, over a hundred radish carvers take part, and there are also competitions for people who work with corn husks and dried flowers.

A radish sculpture from 2014 (Photo By AlejandroLinaresGarcia – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37534958)

Radishes are a European vegetable, but they arrived in Mexico with the Spanish, in particular the friars. The first radish sculptures depicted Biblical scenes, with the nativity being a particular favourite.

Now, one thing that you might have noticed is that these are not the delicate little radishes that we munch on, but are clearly walloping great root vegetables the size of a generous sweet potato. And herein lies a tale. These radishes are no longer fit for human consumption – they are fertilized and chemically treated to within an inch of their lives, and left in the ground long after the normal harvesting time so that they can grow to a prodigious size – the radishes can be up to 50 centimetres long, and weigh up to 3 kilos. On 18th December they are distributed to registered competitors, who use knives and toothpicks to create their designs in time for the show on 23rd December. These days the scenes encompass not just religious scenes but everything from mermaids to strange insect-y creatures.

Photo by By AlejandroLinaresGarcia – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37535291

There are two categories – ‘traditional’ and ‘free’. For the winner of the traditional category, there’s a prize of 15,000 pesos. There are also prizes for the novices and children’s categories, with the latter including bicycles and school supplies. There is no sign of the competition becoming less popular, with waiting times of four to five hours for people to pass through the exhibits. It sounds a bit like the Chelsea Flower Show. Sadly, no one wants to take the exhibits home, as by the end of the competition they look very sorry for themselves. Presumably they end up on the compost heap, but for a few days they have brought fame and some extra much-needed funding to Oaxaca, one of the poorest regions of Mexico. Who knew the humble radish could provide such a thing?

Camel/Giraffe??? from the ‘Free’ section of the competition, from https://casita-colibri.blog/tag/noche-de-rabanos/