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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vohllebaum. Here. December is jam packed with holidays and

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Speaker 1: holiday related parties, and one you don't want to miss

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Speaker 1: out on is Mexico's Noche de las Romanos, or the

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Speaker 1: Night of the Radishes. Every December twenty third in Wahaka,

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Speaker 1: the main Square comes alive with sculptures of dragons, balligators,

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Speaker 1: local celebrities, religious figures, and even politicians, all carved from

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Speaker 1: huge wonky shaped radishes in shades of deep purple to red,

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Speaker 1: with contrasting creamy white interiors revealed by the carvings. The

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Speaker 1: Night of the Radishes is a one hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: seven year old Christmas time tradition in this predominantly Catholic city,

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Speaker 1: where artists vie for the best sculpted radish display, which

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Speaker 1: can earn cash prizes worth several hundred bucks and year

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Speaker 1: long bragging rights. The radishes are native to Mexico. They

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Speaker 1: were brought over by Spanish colonizers back in the fifteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: and these and other European crops and livestock spread among

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Speaker 1: the many indigenous peoples already living there during the colonial period.

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Speaker 1: Wahaka was a very small city situated in a lush,

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Speaker 1: fertile valley. Harvests from local farms were so plentiful that

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Speaker 1: farmers brought much of their bounty to sell at the

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Speaker 1: city market. At the time, the market was set up

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Speaker 1: near the cathedral in what's now Wahaca's main Square. This

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Speaker 1: story goes that at some point in these seventeen hundreds

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Speaker 1: or so, the crop of radishes was so abundant that

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Speaker 1: a portion of them weren't dug up during the spring

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Speaker 1: harvest and were instead left to continue growing. And radishes

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Speaker 1: will grow far past the cute, round, ping pong ball

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Speaker 1: sized things that you usually get in the grocery store,

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Speaker 1: with limbs and bulbs growing off of that main tuber,

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Speaker 1: so that December, someone possibly some Dominican monks finally pulled

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Speaker 1: up those and thought these look weirdly like people or

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Speaker 1: like demons, and were so entertained that they showed them

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Speaker 1: off that year at the Christmas market in that main square,

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Speaker 1: possibly leading to intentional copycats in the following years. The

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Speaker 1: tradition of carving radishes may have started as a way

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Speaker 1: for clever farmers and other market sellers to lure customers

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Speaker 1: to their stalls. Wahaka had even at the time, a

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Speaker 1: long standing tradition of beautiful, intricate wood carving, and it

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Speaker 1: weirdly makes sense that local wood carvers took a fancy

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Speaker 1: to the giant radishes on display and decided to carve

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Speaker 1: them into, for example, Nativity scenes to entice Christmas market shoppers.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety seven, Wahaka's municipal president decided to make

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Speaker 1: the Ratish carved Nativity scene tradition official and created a

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Speaker 1: competition to be held on December twenty third. It became

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Speaker 1: a yearly thing and expanded to include a greater variety

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Speaker 1: of figures. To participate in the Night of the Bratish's

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Speaker 1: Carving competition, entrants need to use specific radishes cultivated by

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Speaker 1: the government on land near the city's airport. The city

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Speaker 1: plants them over a three month period so that by

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Speaker 1: harvest time they come in different sizes. Some are small,

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Speaker 1: but they can get quite big, up to around thirty

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Speaker 1: inches long that's eighty centimeters and weighing over six and

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Speaker 1: a half pounds or about three kilos. Some can be

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Speaker 1: as big around as a human head. Each entrant is

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Speaker 1: assigned a plot number based on the order in which

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Speaker 1: they signed up. Then, four days before the event, entrants

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Speaker 1: are allowed to harvest the ratishes in their assigned plot.

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Speaker 1: As of twenty seventeen, fourteen metric tons of radishes were

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Speaker 1: harvested for the festival from that land. Once the ratishes

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Speaker 1: are harvested, participants spend the next few days and sometimes

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Speaker 1: sleepless nights, cleaning and carving them. On December twenty third,

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Speaker 1: they head over to the square to assemble their often

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Speaker 1: elaborate m piece Ratish displays. Again, in twenty seventeen, one

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Speaker 1: hundred and forty three Ratish crafters displayed their carved works,

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Speaker 1: including eighty two kids. Visitors who now come by the thousands,

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Speaker 1: stroll through the square to watch the artist's fine tune

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Speaker 1: their root vegetable masterpieces, among music, food and fireworks. Around

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Speaker 1: nine o'clock that night, judging takes place based on beauty,

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Speaker 1: technical skill, and creativity, and then three winners are named

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Speaker 1: in each category. The two primary categories in the modern

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Speaker 1: day Night of the Rats's competition are traditional or free.

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Speaker 1: The traditional category requires the Ratish displays to reflect Wahwking culture.

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Speaker 1: In the free category, your radishes can do whatever you want.

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Speaker 1: There are additional categories for scenes made with corn husks

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Speaker 1: and scenes made with dried flowers. The masterpieces these artists

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Speaker 1: create would be impressive even if they were not made

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Speaker 1: of vegetables. Look them up when you get a chain,

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Speaker 1: but think intricate, mission style, architecture, Egyptian gods, scenes from Mezcal,

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Speaker 1: production replicas of Michelangelo and Da Vinci's works, and yes,

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Speaker 1: many Nativity scenes. Radishes are, of course, a perishable vegetable,

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Speaker 1: and one of the biggest challenges besides having the skill

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Speaker 1: or talent to carve radishes, is keeping them fresh so

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Speaker 1: that they're still perky and bright red and white throughout

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Speaker 1: the night of the competition. Participants have different techniques for this,

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Speaker 1: but it usually involves regularly doubting them with water. Today's

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Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Mexico's Night of the Radishes,

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Speaker 1: a quirky Christmas predition on how Stuffworks dot Com, written

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Speaker 1: by Jennifer Walker. Journey brain Stuff is production of by

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and

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Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows,