Celebrations and festivals….that's what everyone enjoys San Miguel de Allende. By some accounts, this little town has more fiestas during the year than anyplace else in Mexico. One of our favorites festivals is coming up this month--Dia de los Locos, or Day of the Crazies.

Taking place each year on the first Sunday after the day of San Antonio de Padua (June 13), Dia de los Locos isn't a religious festival--it's a parade held to celebrate spring. And for some reason it has turned into a costume extravaganza.

The parade of "locos" consists of people from various neighborhoods, businesses and families who don elaborate and colorful costumes that range from political characters and animals to birds and cross-dressing men. They throw inordinate amounts of candy at spectators, and often will convince an unsuspecting bystander to join the party and dance. It starts at the San Antonio church and works its way up Zacateros, Hernández Macías, Insurgentes, Aparicio, Nuñez and down San Francisco to end in the the Jardín.

Participants dress up in an amazing assortment of wild outfits made from old clothes, cardboard boxes, bailing wire, styrofoam, fabric, papier-mache, and whatever else comes to hand. Cartoon and children's characters like Barney, Power Rangers, and Sponge Bob are well represented, along with outlandish caricatures of campesinos, foreigners, and town celebrities.

There are always costumes inspired by movies, and every Dia de los Locos parade we've seen has had several Terminators, Darth Vaders and Orcs from Lord of the Rings marching in it. George Bush, Vincente Fox, and Osama bin Laden are particularly well represented lately.

And cross-dressing is a standard for Dia de los Locos. Old women, young women, black women, white women, nuns, geishas, models, nurses…you name it, there will be a Mexican man dressed like one.

If you march in the Dia de los Locos parade, you must--repeat, must--throw candy. You must throw lots of it, and you can't just throw it to people.