Ah, the holidays: A time to give thanks, spend time with family, eat good food, light your neighbors on fire, rub engine oil in grandma's eyes, get drunk, fight a bull and dress up in a white tuxedo to ward off the furious ghosts of fish. What, that doesn't sound like your holidays? Well, friend, it sounds like you've been celebrating the wrong ones. Let's get that calendar of yours set straight.

7 Batalla de la Rata Muerta: City-Sized Food Fight Featuring a Dead Rat

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In the annual Fiesta de San Pedro Nolasco, instead of a pinata they have something called a "cucana." It's a very similar concept, except that with the cucana, the chances of candy are only 50-50. The other 50 is a dead rat. Which is then retrieved from the ground and used as a projectile because fuck-you-I-didn't- get-candy.



"Hey, let me get in on that."

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The festival is named for Pedro Nolasco, a Catholic saint whose primary claim to fame was the founding of a religious order that sought the redemption of Christian slaves of the Moors in the 1200s. Then, obviously, a plague-dodgeball tournament was decided to be the most appropriate way to celebrate his canonization.



Uh, thanks, guys, but "The Patron Saint of Ratball" really wasn't what I was going for ...