Happy New Year – Four Times Over!

(Gerry Furth-Sides) You can wish friends and family a “Happy New Year” four times over this month. The reasons include religious and secular traditions following of either the sun or the moon.

Let’s start with with the Persian holiday, NOWEUZ, which falls on March 20. It begins with the new moon in an astrological sign, the first sign of Aries, marking spring.

The Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian to correctly reflect the actual time it takes the Earth to circle once around the Sun, known as a tropical year. Let’s just say that, again, for religious reasons, January 1^st was picked to mark the New Year right in tune with the new calendar.  It added a leap year every fourth year.

And add an April Fools Day greeting right in with them. While the origins of April Fools’ Day remain a mystery, it is not forgotten by any means because people still play elaborate pranks on this unofficial holiday. Some historians believe that April Fool’s Day dates back to 1582, the year in which France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar following the 1563 Council of Trent.  Even after the switch, some people who didn’t know about it or forgot about it, continued to celebrate the Julian calendar’s New Year, which took place on the Spring Equinox, which often takes place around April 1. And this is how the holiday began.

You can also always celebrate the Indian Ugadi New Year which falls around the first of April. Feasts with symbolic foods and beautifully colored decorations, much more welcome celebration than a joke.

Culturally rich India, in fact, has it’s own way to celebrate New Year’s day in different times of the year at different places. Indian dates are so diverse because both the sun and lunar lunar calendars are following within the Christian, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Most celebrations based on Hindu calendar movement of the moon.

Generally new year is celebrated in other regions at the time of harvest. It is known as Gudi Padwa, Baisakhi, Cheiraoba, Diwali and Marwari New Year.

This is followed soon after with Ugadi, the joyous holiday celebrated in India. It has the same theme and idea as the Persian New Year, which is the spring equinox.

Ugadi begins on the first of April or very early in the month. The date is determined by changing astrological signed in the zodiac. on the basis of the rotating sun, which changes year by year. Hindus celebrate the New Year on April 14. Thai New Year arrives on April 15. According to its literal meaning in Sanskrit, a Songkran occurs every month. But Thais consider Songkran when the sun moves from Pisces (the last sign of the zodiac in winter) to Aries, the first sign in the zodiac that occurs in spring.

It combines the traditions of both the Indian observance of New Year and Hol, a day when wild colors are splashed on each other. In Thailand, this is done in a more “purist way,” and only water is used!

Preparations for the festival start a week ahead.  As with most New Year holidays, homes are given a thorough cleaning.  People buy new clothes.  This includes dhoti (or sarongs) and also items for the holiday.

Mango leaves and coconuts are considered auspicious in the Hindu tradition, and they are used on Ugadi. People also clean the front of their house with water and cow dung paste, then draw colorful floral designs. People offer prayer in temples. The celebration of Ugadi is marked by religious zeal and social merriment.

The BananaLeafLA kitchen (www.bananaleafla.com) prepares a special festival box of traditional dishes for this special day of Ugadi.  It is a greeting of blessings and abundance. Ugadi Pachadi represents the holiday with six different tastes (sweet, sour,salt, pungent, spice and bitter) symbolizing that life is a mixture 6 different human emotions. 

Ugadi Special Box

Ugadi pachadi
2vada(garralu)and chutney
Ven pongal
Sambar and papad
Tamarind rice(pulihora)
Curd rice
Rice
Eggplant and aloo curry
Mango kesari

Hindus celebrate Vishnu, which marks the first day of the astronomical year on April 15. Lord Vishnu, the God of Time, and his incarnation Lord Krishna are worshipped on the day of Vishnu. A typical greeting and we wish it to you:

May you be showered with
Divine Blessings, wealth and fortune ;
May this year bring your way
abundant joy and bounteous prosperity.

Thailand also marks the New Year on April 13-15 by splashing water on each other for a fresh, playful start to the season. Songkran or Thai New Year is a national holiday. Songkran until 2018 took place from April 13 to every year April when the Thai cabinet extended the festival nationwide to five days, 12–16 April, to enable citizens to travel home for the holiday.