Holidays: Part One

It’s festival season in Nepal. Kind of like the frenzy between Thanksgiving and New Year’s but on steroids. I have been in Godavari for three weeks which technically should amount to 18 days of school, but the actual number is only 12. So literally one out of every three days is a vacation day, not including the Saturdays that are always off. Here’s a quick review of the festivals that have happened so far:

 As you read, please keep in mind that I am experiencing each of these things within the context of one year and one particular family in one particular region of Nepal. The same way that one family’s Christmas traditions do not reflect all families, my experience may not generalize to other people, places, and times. Try your best not to reduce an entire country’s spiritual and cultural identity to the size of my meager understanding.

Rakshya Bandhan (pronounced RAWK-shah BAHN-dah)

Also known as Janai Purnima (pronounced juh-nai purr-nee-mah), this is the festival of the sacred thread. In some places, a priest ties the thread as a symbol of protection and prosperity. In others, sisters tie the thread onto their brothers’ wrists. In my host family, it was the maternal grandfather (maamaa) who tied the thread onto the wrists of the younger generation. He also gave everyone a tika, which is a clump of red rice paste on the forehead as a sign of blessing.

If you are paying close attention, you may have noticed that my host sister’s name is Rakshya just like this holiday. Which is simply because she was born on Rakshya Bandhan! But being born on a holiday that is determined by the full moon, means that this year was the first time that her calendar birthday has fallen on the actual Rakshya Bandhan day, since the original occurrence of course. To celebrate we enjoyed a Nepali birthday cake complete with those obnoxious candles that keep relighting themselves after you blow them out. I also learned that smearing cake, the way Americans sometimes do at weddings, is an appropriate gesture during a birthday celebration in my Nepali family. I didn’t start it, but after my host sister got me with a big smear of frosting I did not hesitate to return her kindness!

 

 

Gaijatra (pronounced GUY-jah-trah)

This is a very popular Newari festival that literally means “the procession of cows.” Supposedly, this began after a prince died and the king wanted desperately to cheer up his grief-stricken queen so he called all the people and offered to reward anyone who could make her laugh. The holiday includes lots of dancing, singing, and satirical jokes about society, life, and death. It is a very light-hearted festival and I really enjoyed observing the traditional celebrations.

In the picture above, all of the dancers are dressed completely different than anything you would see regularly. Some of the men are meant to look like cows, some are hunters, and some are women. They performed a dance throughout their small town at the edge of the Kathmandu Valley. I was only there with two other ETA’s so I don’t know the full story of everything that was happening, but I really enjoyed just being part of the crowd.

Shree Krishna Janmastami

Everyone gets a day off of school to celebrate Lord Krishna’s Birthday. When I first heard this I thought, “Wow! That’s really cool that a whole country gets the day to celebrate the birth of a god from one particular religion!” And then I remembered Christmas.

Unlike Christmas, this was a pretty uneventful holiday in my family. We mostly just enjoyed the day off school to get work done around the house.

Father’s Day

Very similar to the American Father’s Day, this was just a day an auspicious day to recognize all of the work that dad’s do to raise a family. Since it was on a Thursday this year, it of course meant another day without school for me. The way this holiday is celebrated really depends on the size of the extended family, and the age of the children. My host parents went to my host mom’s house for a small family gathering. My host siblings said that when they were younger there used to be a big celebration on their dad’s side of the family as well but that has changed as grandkids have grown up and the western idea of a nuclear family, combined with throngs of young people leaving home to find work, has made its way into popular culture.

 

In my family, it was basically a day to give my host dad special foods. My mom made a particular kind of rice (which you eat with a spoon, as opposed to the rice that you eat with your hands. I’m still pretty boggled about why people who can devour a foothill sized pile of rice covered in lentil sauce in ten milliseconds find eating this particular rice dish, which does not include a liquid component, better to eat with a spoon. But whatever.) We also enjoyed greenish ice cream with chocolate chips in it. I thought it was mint chocolate chip but my family claims it was pistachio. Since I don’t have any other experience with pistachio ice cream I can’t say for certain, and the flavor wasn’t terribly strong, but it was great to eat something cold and familiar.

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The next big holiday is a women's festival called Teej, but there is so much to share that it deserves its own post. So consider this part one in a many part series...