Orange You Glad You Came?

Americans like to go nuts and have food fights.

Spaniards like to throw “des tomatoes.” The annual La Tomatina festival, in which locals throw tomatoes at each other every August in Buñol near Valencia, establishes Spain’s crazy tomato credentials.

It turns out that Americans and Spaniards aren’t the only ones throwing food around in the name of crazy. Locals in Ivrea, Italy, 50 kilometers west of Milano, like to fight their own battles with freshly picked pre-Lent oranges.

Ashes to ashes, they all fall down

“It's a bit masochistic,” admitted Elisabetta Dottelli, 20, an Ivrea native and a member of one of the participating teams, during a short lull in fighting at Piazza P. Ottinetti, one of five major battlegrounds. She was referring to the Historic Carnival of Ivrea, the three-day orange-throwing festival set here to mark the celebration before Lent.

Within moments, fighting would resume and the sky above would be filled, yet again, with a hailstorm of oranges.

...
The carnival is a bizarre and messy affair and, like most everything in Italy, has a long story behind it. One version has it that feudal lords gave pots of beans to the poor, who began throwing the beans back into the streets out of disrespect for such meager charity.