Steemit Engagement Challenge 02 | Share your Country's Culture: Favorite Festival

Hello Everyone,

Sri Lanka is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country with many cultures mixing together. Every month we have celebrations. The calendar always has these red dates which all love and celebrated accordingly. So to pick one is a hard choice but let me share the previous month's celebration which was the new year for Sinhalese and Tamils.

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The Rituals and customs.

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The new year is usually celebrated throughout 04 days with many rituals and customs. The days are always set between April 13 to 16 or even the 17th. During these days there are customs that we have to take place. The astrologers give auspicious times to conduct each ritual with the family.

• Neutral period for religious activities

The first custom we have is to have the final bath of the year before the new year. This is usually set on the 13th of April. Not only clean ourselves but Sri Lankans love to clean their houses, gardens and environment before the new year. The whole family gathers around the parent's or grandparent's house on this day. Then they do these activities as a unit. There is a neutral period where we have to stop the day-to-day activities and do religious activities. Usually, Buddhists visit the village temple during this time.

• Lighting the hearth

With the new year, the neutral period ends. The first ritual of the year is to light the hearth. This is usually done by the mothers. They are the ones who will be responsible to feed everyone in the family others can help with the ritual. All the members of the family participate in this event. What happens here is we boil milk in a clay pot. When the milk spills over from every direction we think of it as a symbol of prosperity.

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• Commencement of Work, First meal & Money transaction between each other.

That's three separate rituals. For me I usually do some work on my laptop, likewise, if there's a student he can study a bit, the farmer can plant & anyone can do their preferred job to represent what they do in this new year.

Then we have the time for our first meal. This meal table has everything from milk rice, curries, sweets, and fruits. The meal preparation starts well over new year so every household like to have many items possible on the table.

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Once the feast finishes we exchange some money with family members. If it is a business people would like to invite some successful person for this occasion and start the first transaction from his or her hand. It's the belief that Sri Lankan has that doing a transaction from a good hand could lead to a better year.

• Applying Oil on Head

This ritual is fading away a little bit. Because this oil has to be made from a collection of herbal, however, to represent the custom we use coconut oil. Usually, the eldest member of the family performs this ritual by applying oil on head of the family members.

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• Leaving for a job

This one is the last ritual and usually is set on the first Monday of the week. Leaving for work meant to say that the celebration is finished and it's time for work. Since this ritual has an auspicious time some people can't follow the exact timings according to where they live and work.

The way I celebrate it..

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I always try to celebrate the new year with my family. We follow most of the rituals and customs. What I love about the new year is visiting relatives and playing games with my fellow brothers and sisters. Even though we are in our mid-life we are not letting our fun go away. We try to pass on these to our future generations and I'm happy that most teenagers follow us.

There are different sports activities related to the new year. Most of those sports are may be found in Sri Lanka only. We usually play Cricket, beach volleyball, run a marathon, chess, online games and whatever we feel at that moment.

^{Playing cricket during this new year holiday with my brothers}

Basically, these days are the most active days for a year for me now. We try to spend every second with the maximum fun. Now we try to allocate at least 02 full days for us to recreate. Previous two years we couldn't get to gather because of the pandemic. But this year everything went well.

I hope you enjoyed reading about our new year.

Thank you.

Peace to all 🙏