Mexico's Two Opposing Forces.

    There are two great opposing forces in Mexico. One is the church, and the other is DNA.
Mexicans love to party. They love to celebrate, it's in their blood, and they celebrate everything from birth to death. They have celebration for the birth of Jesus, the Saints, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and past presidents. They also have many regional celebration that are really incredible. One of them is Noche de los Rabanos.
I stumbled on to this celebration while spending Christmas in Oaxaca, and have been meaning to write about it for sometime now, but never got around to it. Then just a few days ago while drinking coffee, and listening to the Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor, started that morning episode by saying that December, 23, was Noche de los Rabanos, a celebration in the city of Oaxaca, in Mexico. I leapt to my feet when I heard him, and laughed out loud because this is with out doubt the crazies thing I have ever seen.   http://download.publicradio.org/podcast/writers_almanac/2013/12/twa_20131223_64.mp3?_kip_ipx=1236214294-1387817262
Please listen to the whole thing, the poem at the end is very beautiful.

In 2006 Margarita and I flew down to Oaxaca to spend Christmas. After we found our hotel we wandered over to the Zocalo to check out the scene. Before we had left Reno I had some how become aware that we were going to be there for Night of the Radishes. Our flight down had been changed at the last moment, and instead of arriving late at night, we were rescheduled to arrive in the early afternoon. After a nap we headed back to the Zocalo and found it completely transformed from just a few hours prior. A hundred tables ringed the Zocalo, and at each table a team was busy carving giant radishes into the most bizarre scenes imaginable; these are not your garnish your salad radishes, no these are more like a science project gone bad. I saw radishes carved into churches with weddings, rodeos, and nativities. There was a circus, and dances, and crazy looking being from other worlds. Thousands of people were there, the line to get into see the tables up close was a quarter mile long. While all of this was going on small children were running around smashing hollowed out eggs filled with flour and confetti on the heads of their dear old grandparents. We laughed in hysterics at the sight of old folks being pelted, with out mercy, by their grand children as they tried to shuffle away. It was like watching Star Fleet Fighters attacking blimps. Then a man politely ushered the crowd away from the church just in time for the fire works to start raining down from the upper walls and steeple. And when I thought that it couldn't get anymore hilarious they started launching these huge pinwheels laid on their backs. Once lit these spinning disks of potential doom spun wildly, ascending a couple hundred feet into the night sky before disappearing into the city. A man next to me turned my way and we both burst into laughter, the universal language. This party went on to the wee hours of the morning. Young and old. Parents, grandparents, and children a like stayed up to the early hours of morning. Then it was time to pay for their sins.

Paying for ones sins in Mexico starts early in the morning, and not just on Sunday. Oh no, after any big night you can rest assured that you will not be sleeping past 6:30am, because that's when the church bells start ringing, calling their naughty flock to prayer.
CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG, it goes on and on, CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG. Then a pause, followed by one last CLANG. For years I couldn't figure out this last CLANG. I thought it was the sadistic humor of a disgruntled bell ringer playing a nasty game...OH trying to fall back to sleep are you, well here is one more CLANG for you, you egg throwing, fire work shooting sinners. But at other times I would hear two, or even three CLANGS.
Years later I found out that of course the one, two, or three rings were not the work of a mad bell ringer but the first, second, or third call to Mass. What is humors is that, as explained to me by a Mexican friend, if your are in bed and hear the third call to Mass, you are late, and you better hurry up and go, or your in trouble.
What is really cool about this festival is just how old it is. I've read that the Spanish brought the radish to Mexico in the 16th century. And at some point, though no one is quite sure, a church friar encouraged the locals to not only cultivate, but to leave them in the ground until they were huge, and then carve them into all kinds of shapes. Three centuries later, in 1897, the mayor of Oaxaca formalized the festival that has been going on every year since.
Christmas in Mexico is a must do, and I highly recommend Oaxaca, and Noche de los Rabanos, as a place to visit for the Holidays.