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Cultures globally have their customs and traditions that they follow when celebrating festivals. Different cultures also have different kinds of festivals that may be unique to a specific culture or shared among many cultures but with different traditions. With cultural sensitivity growing in the modern social landscape, individuals worldwide are becoming more aware of what may be offensive to other communities. As cultural festivals have their customs, some may be culturally sensitive to others. These are 15 cultural festivals whose traditions would be questioned for cultural sensitivity today:
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Baby Jumping
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Baby Jumping, or El Colacho, is a Spanish cultural festival from the early 17th century. This annual festival involves newborn babies lying on mattresses along streets, and male members of the society dressed in costumes leap over them as they lay down. The central belief behind this festival is that the ceremony enables evil spirits to absorb the sins of the newborn to give them a life of protection against misfortune and infections.
Christmas Fighting Festival
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A province in Peru annually hosts the Christmas Fighting Festival, also called Takanakuy, on Christmas Day, where people gather to witness and partake in a series of public fistfights. One of the primary purposes of this festival is to enable community members to settle and resolve conflicts and disputes that build up throughout the year to promote community bonding. Specific communities may regard this festival as culturally sensitive towards those who celebrate the same day as the day Jesus was born.
Nakizumo
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Nakizumo, or the Crying Baby Festival, is a Japanese annual festival with lively events. The main event involves sumos carrying babies and a referee taunting them to induce crying. One of the primary purposes of this tradition is to crown the baby who cries the loudest a winner, with the idea that babies who cry grow up to be strong and healthy. Today, some may consider this to be traumatizing to the babies.
Yanomani Death Rites
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Yanomani is an Amazonian tribe with peculiar cultural practices regarding death rites. The tribe usually cremates the remains of the dead, followed by family members consuming the ashes of the cremated body because they believe that the soul of the cremated person gets absorbed by the people who consume it instead of being trapped in the world between life and death.
Self-Mummification
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Self-mummification was practiced by the Sokisishinbutsu Buddhist monks, who would mummify themselves and starve themselves to death in the process. One of the central beliefs behind this practice was that the monks would fully separate themselves from the physical world to become a part of the world rather than be reincarnated. This tradition carries on for multiple days of starvation to complete the process. Many may regard it culturally inappropriate to starve oneself in modern contexts.
Festival of Near-Death Experience
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Many may find celebrating a near-death experience quite strange. In contrast, the people of Neves in Spain celebrate the Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme, or the Festival of Near-Death Experience, each year. The festival includes a kind of pilgrimage made by individuals who have had near-death experiences and who travel while being carried in a coffin to the Santa Marata de Ribarteme church, where they solemnly appreciate life.
Kanamara Matsuri
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Kanamara Matsuri, also called the Festival of the Steel Phallus, is a Japanese cultural festival that celebrates the male phallus. The festival is centered around two gods prayed to by the people for easy childbirths, marital harmony, and protection from sexually transmitted diseases. The festival is associated with a legend where a steel phallus was used to break the teeth of a demon, leading to the symbolism behind the festival. Although there is great cultural significance behind the festival, some communities may consider it culturally insensitive due to its sexual nature.
Moose Dropping Festival
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In the northern state of Alaska in the United States, a Moose Dropping Festival is celebrated mainly to draw tourists, beginning in the early 1970s. The festival includes using moose poop for different kinds of activities, ranging from cooking them and spraying them with varnish for a round of nugget tossing or dropping numbered nuggets as a form of raffle contest. Although this festival has no cultural significance, it is regularly celebrated and allows the townspeople to gather. Many consider the festival culturally insensitive because of the use of animal droppings for a celebration.
Cheese Rolling Festival
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Gloucestershire in England hosts an annual two-day festival that centers around a peculiar competition where an 8-pound wheel of Gloucester cheese is rolled down a steep hill with festival goers running after the cheese to catch it. The festival allows attendees to gather together in one place, offering connections to be formed or strengthened within the community. Other communities may find this festival culturally sensitive or silly as there is no cultural significance to the festival, and it only includes individuals falling and getting hurt through the process of running after a wheel of cheese.
Fiesta de San Fermín
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The Fiesta de San Fermín is a running of the bulls annual festival held in July in Pamplona, Spain. The festival initially began to observe Saint Fermin’s feast day. Today, the festival includes a running course where individuals sprint down the course, followed by six charging bulls. The festival has been known to cause multiple injuries, even leading to unfortunate fatalities, but is still celebrated every year. This festival may seem highly outdated to many and insensitive towards the treatment of animals.
Goose Pulling
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Goose Pulling is an old-blood sport traditionally practiced in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, and England. The sport involved tying a live goose by its feet onto a cable or a pole. Men would then take turns trying to pull the goose’s head off. This is a barbaric tradition with harmful practices and would be considered highly insensitive towards animals by multiple communities across the world. Today, the sport is continued. However, the live goose is now replaced with a dead one.
Thaipusam
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Thaipusam is a cultural festival celebrated by the people of Tamil Nadu in India in honor of Lord Murugan, the Hindu god of war. During this festival, individuals perform several acts to show their devotion. Some perform acts of burden, while others perform acts of mortification of the flesh, piercing their skin with skewers. Some modern communities may deem these practices not culturally sensitive, as individuals willingly endure varying degrees of pain.
Carnival of Ivrea
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The Carnival of Ivrea is an annual fruit battle festival in Irvra, an Italian town. The festival includes a citrus battle, in which individuals are seated in a cart along with oranges as they are drawn through the streets for a food battle. The festival is celebrated to re-enact a legendary medieval uprising in which the townspeople overthrew a tyrant. However, in the modern context, the festival may be questioned for cultural sensitivity because of the enormous wastage of food and resources.
Rouketopolemos
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Rouketopolemos is a traditional Easter celebration held in the Greek village of Vrontados. The celebration also called a Rocket War, involves rival churches firing homemade fireworks toward each other during church services to hit the opposing church’s bell tower. Although the tradition has been carried out for over a hundred years, it is questioned for cultural sensitivity owing to its deliberate destruction of religious buildings and potential to injure individuals seriously. The whole event is quite the specter, but the homemade fireworks often veer off course and cause damage to neighboring buildings and homes.
Coming-of-Age Rituals in Brazil
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A tribe in Brazil called the Satere-Mawe has a unique cultural tradition that they follow to celebrate becoming an adult, where individuals are required to wear a glove filled with bullet ants. These ants are unlike regular ants, as their sting is considered one of the most painful stings. This ritual celebrates young people entering adulthood. However, many modern communities may consider it to be outdated because it involves purposefully causing someone harm.