By Clint McElroy
HQ 124 | WINTER 2024
I am very impressed with the list of festivals in this edition of HQ. I’m a big fan of “festing” and feel there are never enough festivals to be festive in, or should I say at? Anyway, for that reason I felt it was my job, nay, my sacred municipal duty, to suggest some new festivals that we could bring to our region and increase the amount of “festivalization.”
To find events we could emulate, I electronically spanned the globe to bring you a constant variety of festivals. Note to my wife: Yes, Carol, these are real festivals, and no, I am not a big, fat liar.
In the Spanish town of Buñol, they have a festival called “La Tomatina.” The event, held on the last Wednesday of August each year, starts with a race to climb to the top of a greased pole, which is topped with a ham. The person who gets to the top of the Crisco-smeared construct gets to keep the ham. The grabbing of the ham triggers the main event, where everyone in attendance — typically 40,000-50,000 people — start hurling tomatoes at each other. The crowd goes through more than 100 tons of tomatoes in this fabulous fruity fracas. Ham? Tomatoes? Come on! You are just a handful of shredded lettuce away from a Cam’s Ham sandwich.
Sponsor recommendation: Cam’s Ham.
Another great find I stumbled upon in my research is the Festival of Hungry Ghosts in China. On this day a portal opens to the underworld, freeing ghosts who are up to no good. To keep these ectoplasmic hooligans from wreaking havoc, people burn fake money and paper replicas of items the evil spirits would covet in the real world — I’m guessing things like yachts, Teslas, Louis Vuitton handbags and Krispy Kreme donuts.
Sponsor recommendation: Serial Spirits podcast, hosted by local parapsychologist and ghost hunter Annie Weible.
Every year on Dec. 23 the “Night of the Radishes” is celebrated in Oaxaca City, Mexico. The locals carve oversized radishes into holiday-related art, usually nativity scenes. Thousands of people from all over come to see radish wise men, radish donkeys, radish drummer boys and more. Maybe our part of the world could do something similar as a perfect companion to the annual Kenova Pumpkin House in October. Ceredo could play host to the Radish House and Kenova could continue the Pumpkin House as a kind of one-two Halloween punch. Families could begin the evening admiring hundreds of glowing jack-o’-lanterns and then skip over to the Radish House to take in its creepy carved creations.
Sponsor recommendation: Brad and Alys Smith.
One of the most beautiful cities in the world, Florence, Italy, hosts a festival that consists of a weekend-long harpastum tournament. Just in case you don’t have ESPN VIII as part of your cable package, harpastum is an ancient Roman sport that is part football, part rugby, part Jackie Chan movie. At its heart, the sport is just two teams trying to throw a ball into the other side’s net by any means necessary. You read that right — any means. Each team consists of 27 players, and when one of your players has the ball, your teammates try whatever they can to incapacitate the other team members. You have 54 people trying to take each other out, and it often leads to out-and-out fistfights. To me the game sounds like a great way to resolve political differences. As such, I propose that the State of West Virginia eliminate the annual legislative session where 134 lawmakers spend months trying to pass bills. They can be replaced with a mere 54 politicians who can compete in a weeklong Harpastum Legislative Festival where laws and political scores can be ironed out on the playing field.
Sponsor recommendation: The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).
Speaking of politicians, just remember what the late, great A. James Manchin once said: “A festival is the best-of-all!” You don’t know, he might have said that …
