Cheeses for festivals

The festivals of the year are often festivals of cheese. Christmas brings Stilton, Vacherin Mont d'Or and Parmigiano to the table; Easter brings paskha and flaounes; Diwali and Durga Puja fill sweet shops with chhena; Shavuot is the dairy festival of the Jewish year. Cheese towns hold festivals of their own, from the Alkmaar cheese market to the cheese fair at Bra in Piedmont and the cheese rolling at Cooper's Hill.

Religious festivals

Christmas and Easter, Diwali and Durga Puja, Shavuot, Ramadan and Eid each have cheeses of their own. Vacherin Mont d'Or, a soft cheese bound in a strip of spruce bark and made only in the colder months, is baked in its box at Christmas in France and Switzerland. In Bengal, Durga Puja and Diwali are seasons for sandesh and rasgulla, bought by the box. Shavuot tables carry cheesecake and blintzes, and Ramadan nights bring kunafa.

Cheese fairs and markets

In Alkmaar, in the Netherlands, carriers in white uniforms and coloured straw hats run wheels of Gouda and Edam on wooden barrows across the square on Friday mornings through spring and summer, a market held for centuries. Gouda, Edam and Woerden keep similar markets. Bra, in Piedmont, hosts Cheese, a large Slow Food fair held every two years. In France, towns such as Livarot and Rocamadour hold cheese fairs each year.

Contests and games

At Cooper's Hill near Gloucester, runners chase a round of Double Gloucester down a slope so steep that most of them tumble, on the late May bank holiday. In parts of central Italy, players bowl wheels of pecorino along country roads in a game called the ruzzola. Cheese competitions such as the World Cheese Awards and national shows judge thousands of entries a year and give small dairies a stage of their own.

Worth knowing

Vacherin Mont d'Or: Christmas cheese bound in spruce
Stilton: Christmas blue with port
Gouda: Carried across the square in Alkmaar
Double Gloucester: The wheel chased down Cooper's Hill
Sandesh: Durga Puja and Diwali sweet
Paskha: Easter dessert of tvorog
Cheese, Bra: Slow Food cheese fair held every two years

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Sage Derby: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, source

Kalari: Zeeshanqazi786, CC0, source

Caerphilly: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, source

French Neufchâtel: Coyau, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Formaggio di fossa: Zeugma fr ( talk ) (Antoine FLEURY-GOBERT), CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Västerbotten: Nata Uploaded by File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske), CC BY 2.0, source

Double Gloucester: Jon Sullivan, Public domain, source

Ricotta: 8w9d, CC0, source

Circassian cheese: Tetk200, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Edam: Yvwv, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Basket cheese: E4024, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Tvorog: Loyna, CC BY-SA 2.5, source

Gorgonzola: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Khoa: Miansari66, Public domain, source

Chhena: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source

Jāņi cheese: Xil, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Prescinsêua: Own work, CC0, source

Banbury cheese: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Paskha: Mitrius, Public domain, source

Chhena Poda: http://recipes.oriyaonline.com/content_images/chhena%20poda.JPG, FAL, source

Festivals: cheeses that mark them