This Saturday, November 22, is the Full Moon Day of Tazaungmone. Another Light Year Festival again, and this light festival is called "
Ta-zaung-dine". Like I said in my previous post about Thadingyut, many of our holidays are based on the lunar calendar. Tazaungmone in Myanmar Calendar is the month of November. November is the 8th month of Myanmar calendar. It is a month at the end of the rainy season and at the outset of the winter.
The festival is mentioned in stories before Buddha's time as
Kattika festival, in honour of the guardian gods of the planets. It is said that certain planetary signs of the zodiac are in the ascendant during the month and such that people's thoughts are bent on mischief. Kings of the olden days decreed that feasts were to be held and all kinds of merry-making were licensed, so that people's thoughts might be channelled away from serious mischief.
Still people, especially young men, still celebrate this mischief-making, called "
kyee-ma-noe pwe" which means "A Festival Where The Crow Doesn't Wake Up". Young men will sneak into peoples’ compounds at night to take things like earthen pots and benches which they hide in the compounds of neighbours. The next morning people have to search neighbours’ compounds to retrieve their property. No one gets angry because it is done in a spirit of fun. Last year, someone put a Buddhist flag in front of our house, taken from the neighborhood's sermon pavillion. I have also heard of the guys writing the words "Old Maiden" in front of a house where an old maiden lives... It's quite funny, hehehe
Though this festival began in the time immemorial as a folk ritual, it is regarded today as an especially Buddhist festival. The month is the time for offering robes to the Monks. There is no restriction whatsoever when robes should be offered but this month's offering has a special significance. This is a special time, when, after long months of stay in the monastery during the lent without overnight travel and seclusion, monks make preparations to go on trips to see and pay respects to their teachers and parents. Now the ban on travel has been lifted.
At such a time, many monks are in need of new robes. Offering of robes and other gifts,
offering are made not to any individual monk, but so that the needy one shall
get the robe and it does the Buddha teach a true spirit of offering. It is the
custom of the community to organize the offering of gifts, everyone contributing
in cash or in kind. Members of the same profession or people working in the same
office collect gifts for the monastery. Therefore, during this season, you will
see wooden triangular structures standing in market places or in roadside. Each
structure is hung with gifts, like sets of yellow robes, towels, napkins, cups
and such useful things big and small. Those structures hung with gifts are
called
Pa-de-thar trees.
Ma-thoe robes weaving ceremonies are being held at various prominent pagodas.
Mathoe robes
weaving contests on the Great Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon are the most
significant in Myanmar.
Mathoe robe means the weaving of the robe must be completed and must be offered to the
Buddha before dawn. If the weaving of the robes is delayed and could not
complete the work, it becomes an unsuccessful work. Preparation for
Mathoe Robes
weaving contests is taken place on the platform of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the
evening of the eve of the full moon day of Tazaungmone.
On the full moon day of Tazaungmone, all the stars completely shown out and at midnight on that day, people usually eat vegetable curry and it is believed the bitter Maezali bud salad, you will be free from all diseases. Streaming from that belief, people usually prepare Maezali bud salads and share it with friends. But I don't like maezali leaves very much because it's bitter.
Every Tazaungmone, a lot of people flock to Taunggyi for Lu Ping festival commonly known as hot balloon festival celebrates by Pa O, one of the many ethnic groups in the region. On the occasion people enjoy fun and merriment by holding firework-launching competitions. The firework is in the form of rockets. There is also hot balloons competitions on the day and night occasions. Day balloons are usually in the form of Pagodas, and animals such as elephant, dragon or ducks while the night balloons usually in the shape of rugby ball, huge elongated paper balls with small lighted multicolored paper lanterns hung around their sides and balloons would sting along fireworks and fire sticks which are set off mid-air fireworks. I haven't been there before but I read about it alot. Even Juu, my favorite writer, wrote a short story basing on the festival.
Sorry, but I copy and pasted from a lot of web sites. ^_^
(Sources:
MTI,
MT&K)
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Update: I forgot to mention this: you can watch the festival live at this blog called
Taunggyi - The Cherry Land. But it's written in Burmese. You'll have to download Zawgyi-One font to be able to read.
Comments (6)
splork_splork: thank you for visiting :)
Thanks.