Festivals, Holidays, and Celebrations in Myanmar
To every thing there is a season,
And a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.
- Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
Humanity has passed through an incredible year. It was not a time to celebrate. It was not a time to dance. It was a time to refrain from embracing, and it was a time to pluck up that which was planted. It was a time to put on facemasks. It was a time to wash hands. And it was a time to cancel flights under the heaven. Due to Covid-19, festivals and celebrations may be scaled down this year.
Merry Christmas!
For minority ethnic groups such as Kayin, Kachin, Chin as well as some Burmese, December is the time to celebrate Christmas. Christmas Day is an official holiday in Myanmar. Yes, in Myanmar there are Christmas celebrations.
မြန်မာ | myan2-ma2 — Myanmar (noun)
ပြည် | pyi2 — Country (noun)
မှာ | hma2 — at (postpositional marker)
ခရစ္စမတ် | kha1-rit-sa1-mut — Christmas (noun)
လုပ် | loat — do (verb)
ကြ | ja1 — plural (particle)
သလား | dtha1 la3 — ? (ppm + particle)
မြန်မာပြည်မှာခရစ္စမတ်လုပ်ကြသလား | myan2-ma2 pyi2 hma2 kha1-rit-sa1-mut loat ja1 dtha1 la3 — Do people celebrate Christmas in Myanmar?
လုပ် | loat — do (verb)
ကြ | ja1 — plural (particle)
တာပေါ့ | da2 bau1 — of course! (particle)
လုပ်ကြတာပေါ့ | Loat ja1 da2 bau1 — Of course we/they do!
How to say "to celebrate" in Burmese?
The formal word for "to celebrate (verb)" in Burmese is ကျင်းပ | kjin3-pa1. For example, the interviewer on the TV or radio might ask the same question using ကျင်းပ | kjin3-pa1 in place of လုပ် | loat as follow:
မြန်မာ | myan2-ma2 — Myanmar (noun)
ပြည် | pyi2 — Country (noun)
မှာ | hma2 — at (postpositional marker)
ခရစ္စမတ် | kha1-rit-sa1-mut — Christmas (noun)
ကျင်းပ | kjin3-pa1 — celebrate (verb)
ကြ | ja1 — plural (particle)
ပါ | ba2 — polite soften tone (particle)
သလား | tha1 la3 — ? (ppm + particle)
မြန်မာပြည်မှာ ခရစ္စမတ် ကျင်းပကြပါသလား | myan2-ma2-pyi2 hma2 kha1-rit sa1-mut kjin3-pa1 ja1 ba2 tha1 la3 — Do people celebrate Christmas in Myanmar?
I can formally answer as follow:
ဟုတ်ကဲ့ပါ | Hote-keare1 ba2 — Yes (yes + polite soften tone)
မြန်မာ | myan2-ma2 — Myanmar
ပြည် | pyi2 — Country
မှာ | hma2 — at
ခရစ္စမတ် | kha1-rit-sa1-mut — Christmas
ကျင်းပ | kjin3-pa1 — celebrate
ကြ | ja1 — plural
ပါတယ် | ba2 deare2 — affirmation. (polite soften tone + affirmative)
ဟုတ်ကဲ့ပါ ၊ မြန်မာပြည်မှာ ခရစ္စမတ် ကျင်းပကြပါတယ် | Hote-keare1 ba2... myan2-ma2-pyi2 hma2 kha1-rit-sa1-mut kjin3-pa1 ja1 ba2 deare2 — Yes, we do celebrate Christmas in Myanmar
Myanmar Calendar System and Months in Burmese
Myanmar Calendar is based on Lunar system which has alternating months with 29 days and 30 days, and a total of 12 months in a (normal) year. Simple calculation shows that it all adds up to only 354 days in a year, which is much less than approximately 365 days for the earth to go around the sun. Since the weather and regular seasons on earth more or less follow the solar calendar rather than the lunar months, that must have been a problem for farmers who must grow crops at the regular intervals such as at the start of monsoon season around mind-June every year.
In order to make up for loss days in a year, Burmese Calendar adds an extra month every 3 years known as ဝါထပ်တယ် | wa2 htut deare2. Basically, ဒုတိယ ဝါဆို | du1-ta1-ya1 wa2-zo2 (Second ဝါဆို | wa2-zo2 month) always falls around July every 3 years or so. In the long run, even that is not sufficient to make up for the loss days, so the interval of adding an extra month is sometimes reduced to 2 years known as ဝါကြီးထပ်တယ် | wa2 ji3 htut deare2.
According to some elders, ဝါကြီးထပ်တယ် | wa2 ji3 htut deare2 occurs roughly every 10 years interval in addition to ဝါထပ်တယ် | wa2 htut deare2 at every 3 year interval. Well, not exactly right. It has something to do with the frequency within the 19 years interval. You can read more about it here. I have included in this page the historic pattern of Myanmar Calendar adding an extra month for the last 100 years.
Burmese New Year starts around mid-April every year, and months are as follow:
# | Burmese |
---|---|
01 | တန်ခူး | da1-gu3 — Mid April after thin3-jan2 Water Festival |
02 | ကဆုန် | ka1-hsone2 |
03 | နယုန် | na1-yone2 |
04 | ဝါဆို | wa2-zo2 — Extra month is added every 3 years and 2 years intervals |
05 | ဝါခေါင် | wa2-goun2 |
06 | တော်သလင်း | tau2-tha1-lin3 |
07 | သီတင်းကျွတ် | dtha1-din3-joot |
08 | တန်ဆောင်မုန်း | da1-zoun2-mone3 |
09 | နတ်တော် | na1-dau2 |
10 | ပြာသို | pya2-tho2 |
11 | တပို့တွဲ | da1-bo1-dweare3 |
12 | တပေါင်း | da1-boun3 |
If you take a closer look at Myanmar Calendar with both International Dates and Burmese Months, another curious thing you will find is that the days 1,2,3,4 in Burmese only go up to 14. Please refer to ဥပုသ်နေ့ | u1-boat nay1 explained here.
The year AD 2012 is the year 1374 in Myanmar Calendar.
English | AUDIO |
---|---|
Sunday | တနင်္ဂနွေ | ta1-nin3-ga1-nway2 |
Monday | တနင်္လာ | ta1-nin3-la2 |
Tuesday | အင်္ဂါ | in2-ga2 |
Wednesday | ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး | boat-da1-hu3 |
Thursday | ကြာသပတေး | kja2-dtha2-ba1-day3 |
Friday | သောကြာ | thout-kja2 |
Saturday | စနေ | sa1-nay2 |
Festivals, Celebrations, and Public Holidays in Myanmar for 2021
Since traditional Burmese festivals follow the lunar calendar, most except for the Water Festival and Burmese New Year fall on different Gregorian dates every year. Buddhist festivities mostly fall on the full moon day. The following table shows Myanmar public holidays (Dates shown in red), festivals, and celebrations tentatively scheduled for the year 2021.
Some public holidays such as Independence Day, Martyrs' Day, and Christmas follow the Gregorian Calendar, and fall on the same date every year. The most noticeable changes for 2018 and 2019 were reduction of Myanmar Water Festival and New Year from 10 days to 5. The lost holidays were made up by 2 extra days of Thadingyut in October, Tazaungdaing eve in November plus International New Year's eve and New Year's Day. Christmas eve has become a holiday for the first time in 2021.
Date | Event |
---|---|
January 01 | International New Year's Day နိုင်ငံတကာနှစ်သစ်ကူးနေ့ | nine2-ngan2 da1-ga2 hnit-thit-ku3 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide & around the World |
January 04 | Independence Day လွတ်လပ်ရေးနေ့ | loot-lut-yay3 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
January 13 | Ethnic Kayin (Karen) New Year ကရင်နှစ်သစ်ကူး | ka1-yin2 hnit thit ku3 ကရင်ပြည်နယ်၊ ရန်ကုန်တိုင်း | Kayin State and Yangon |
January 13 - February 11 | Ananda Pagoda Festival အနန္ဒာဘုရားပွဲ | a-nun2-da2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 ပုဂံ | Bagan The whole month of ပြာသို | pya2 tho2. |
January | Ethnic Kachin Manaw Festival ကချင်ရိုးရာမနောပွဲတော် | ka1-chin2 yo3-ya2 ma1-nau3 pweare3 dau2 မြစ်ကြီးနား၊ ကချင်ပြည်နယ် | Myitkyina, Kachin State (Dates to be determined) Structures and poles in Manaw Festival have some resemblance to Totem Poles of First Nation People in Vancouver, Canada. (Watch YouTube Video) |
February 10 - February 12 | Ethnic Naga New Year နာဂရိုးရာနှစ်သစ်ကူးပွဲတော် | na2-ga1 yo3-ya2 hnit-thit-ku3 pweare3 dau2 လဟယ်၊ လေရှိုး | La-Hair, Lay-Show (Watch YouTube Video) |
February 12 | Chinese Lunar New Year တရုတ်နှစ်သစ်ကူး | ta1-yoat hnit-thit ku3 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide & around the World for Chinese people Private Celebrations for 3-4 days |
February 12 | Union Day ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့ | pyi2-doun2-zu1 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
February 12 - March 12 | Sticky Rice Cooking Festival ထမနဲပွဲ | hta1-ma1-neare3 pweare3 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Anyday during တပို့တွဲ | da1-bo1-dweare3 month |
February 14 | Valentine's Day ချစ်သူများနေ့ | chit-thu2 mya3 nay1 ကမ္ဘာအနှံ့ | around the World Getting popular in Myanmar and increasingly commercialized. |
February 16 - April 17 | Shwe Settaw Pagoda Festival ရွှေစက်တော်ဘုရားပွဲ | shway2-set-tau2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 မင်းဘူး | Minbu |
February 19 - February 27 | Kyike Khouk Pagoda Festival ကျိုက်ခေါက်ဘုရားပွဲတော် | kjite-khout pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 သန်လျှင် | Thanlyin (also known as ta1-nyin2) |
February 25 - February 26 | Mahamuni Pagoda Festival မဟာမုနိဘုရားပွဲ | ma1-ha2-mu1-ni1 pfa1-ya3 bweare3 မန္တလေး | Mandalay On the eve and full moon day of တပို့တွဲ | da1-bo1-dweare3 month. |
February 26 | Ethnic Kayin Fire Festival ကရင်ရိုးရာမီးပုံပွဲ | ka1-yin2 yo3-y2 mi3-bone2 pweare3 ကျုံဒိုး၊ ဘားအံ၊ ကရင်ပြည်နယ် | Hpa-an, Kayin State Dance around the bonfire on the full moon night of တပို့တွဲ | da1-bo1-dweare3 month |
March 02 | Peasants Day တောင်သူလယ်သမားနေ့ | toun2-dthu2 leare2 dtha1-ma3 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
March 13 | Mawtinzun Pagoda Festival မော်တင်စွန်းဘုရားပွဲတော် | mau2-tin2-zoon3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 ဟိုင်းကြီးမြို့နယ်ခွဲ | Hine Gyi |
March 15 | Ko Gyi Kyaw Nat (Spirit) Festival ကိုကြီးကျော်နတ်ပွဲ | ko2-ji3 jau2 nut pweare3 ပခန်း၊ ရေစကြို | Pa Khan, Yay Za Gyo Drunken spirit. (See Music Video) |
March 20 | Inn Taw Gyi Pagoada Festival အင်းတော်ကြီးဘုရားပွဲတော် | in3-dau2-ji3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 မိုးညင်းမြို့နယ် | Moe Nyin, Kachin State at Indawgyi Lake. |
March 21 | Pyi Tau Pyan Pagoda Festival ပြည်တော်ပြန်ဘုရားပွဲတော် | pyi2-dau3-pyan2 pfa2-ya3 pweare3-dau2 ဇလွန်၊ ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Zalon, Ayeyarwaddy |
March 26 - March 29 | Tabaung Full Moon Festival တပေါင်းပွဲတော် | da1-boun3 pweare3 dau2 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Full moon night falls on Saturday, March 27. |
March 27 | Armed Forces Day တပ်မတော်နေ့ | tut-ma1-dau2 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide (Watch Parade on YouTube) |
April 13 - April 16 | Thingyan Water Festival အတာသင်္ကြန်ပွဲတော် | a-ta2 dtha1-jan2 pweare3 dau2 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
April 17 - April 19 | Myanmar New Year မြန်မာနှစ်သစ်ကူး | myan2-ma2 hnit thit ku3 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide The day after the Water Festival. Holidays till April 19. |
April 19 - April 26 | Shwemawdaw Pagoda Festival ရွှေမော်ဓော | shway2-mau2-dau3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 ပဲခူးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Bago Starting from တန်ခူး | da1-gu3 8th till full mooon night. This Pagoda at 114 metres (374 ft) in height is tallest in Myanmar, and taller than Shwedagon Pagoda at at 98 metres (322 ft). |
May 01 | May Day (International Workers' Day) ကမ္ဘာ့အလုပ်သမားနေ့ | ga1-ba1 a-loat-tha1-ma3 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide & around the World. |
May 13 | Poppa Spirit Festival ပုပ္ပါးနတ်ပွဲ | pope-pa3 nut-pweare3 ပုပ္ပါးတောင် | Mount Poppa |
May 25 | Kasone Full Moon (Vesak) Day ကဆုန်ညောင်ရေသွန်းပွဲ | ka1-hsone2 nyoun2-yay2-thoon3 pweare3 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Buddhist holiday when devotess pour water on Bo trees at famous pagodas, especially Shwedagon Pagoda. |
May 25 | Town Yoe Lantern Festival တောင်ရိုးမီးထွန်းပွဲတော် | toun2-yo3 mi3 htoon3 pweare3 dau2 ပင်းတယ | Pindaya Ethnic festival in Shan State on the full moon night of ကဆုန် | ka1-hsone2 month. |
May 25 | Shitthaung Pagoda Festival ရှစ်သောင်းဘုရားပွဲတော် | shit-thoun3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 မြောက်ဦး၊ ရခိုင် | Mrauk U, Rakhine Shitthaung means 80,000. Buddhist celebrations at ancient Rakhine City on the full moon night of ကဆုန် | ka1-hsone2 month. |
June 17 - July 01 | Abhidhamma Recitation Events နယုန်စာတော်ပြန်ပွဲ | na1-yone2 sa2-dau2-pyan2 pweare3 Non-stop all night Recitation of Buddhist Scriptures in Pali by the learnt monks for 15 days starting from 8th of that month. (Watch YouTube Video) |
June 17 | Thihoshin Pagoda Festival သီဟိုဠ်ရှင်ဘုရားပွဲတော် | thi2-ho2-shin2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 ပခုက္ကူ၊ မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Pa-Khoak-Ku, Magway. On the 8th of the month of နယုန် | na1-yone2. |
July 17 - July 19 | Se Taw Lay Phaung Taw U Pagoda Festival ဆည်တော်လေး ဖောင်တော်ဦးစေတီဘုရားပွဲ | hseare2-dau2-lay3 pfoun2-dau2-u3 zay2-de2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 မန္တလေး | Mandalay |
July 19 | Martyrs' Day အာဇာနည်နေ့ | ah2-za2-ni2 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
July 23 | Dhammasakyar Day ဝါဆိုလပြည့် | wa2-zo2 la1 pyay1 Waso Full Moon ဓမ္မာစကြာနေ့ | da1-ma2 set-kja2 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Celebration of the first sermon of the Buddha. |
July 23 | Shin Pin Sa Kyo Pagoda Festival ရှင်ပင်စကြိုဘုရားပွဲတော် | shin2-pin2 sa1-kjo2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 စလေ၊ မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Salay, Magui |
July 23 | Fish feeding Festival ငါးစာကြွေးပွဲ | nga3 za2 kjway3 pweare3 ပွင့်ဖြူ၊ မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး | Pwint Hpyu, Magui |
July 23 | Waso flower picking Festival ဝါဆိုပန်းခူးပွဲတော် | wa2-zo2 pan3 khu3 pweare3 dau2 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
August 08 | Shwe Kyoon Pin Spirit Festival ရွှေကျွန်းပင်နတ်ပွဲ | shway2-kjoon3-bin2 nut pweare3 မင်းကွန်း၊ | Mingun |
September 01 | Yatanar Gu Spirit Festival ရတနာဂူနတ်ပွဲ | ya1-da1-na2 gu2 nut pweare3 အမရပူရ၊ | Amarapura |
September 21 | Chinese Mid-Autumn Mooncake Festival 中秋节 (Zhongqiu jie ) on the full moon day. Private celebrations for Chinese. |
September 22 | Boe Min Khaung Spirit Festival ဘိုးမင်းခေါင်ပွဲတော် | bo3 min3 goun2 pweare3 dau2 ပုပ္ပါး၊ ကျောက်ပန်းတောင်း | Mount Poppa, Kyauk Padaung |
October 06 - October 20 | Shwezigon Pagoda Festival ရွှေစည်းခုံဘုရားပွဲ | shway2-zi3-gome2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 ညောင်ဦး၊ ပုဂံ၊ မန္တလေး | Nyaung U, Bagan, Mandalay |
October 06 - October 20 | Hpaung Daw U Pagoda Festival ဖောင်တော်ဦးဘုရားပွဲ | pfoun2-dau2-u3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 အင်းလေးကန် | Inle Lake Pagoda Festival and boat race at popular tourist destination. |
October 15 | Mya Thaloon Pagoda Festival မြသလွန်ဘုရားပွဲတော် | mya1-tha1-loon2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 dau2 မကွေးမြို့ | Magui |
October 19 | Kyauk Tau Gyi Pagoda Festival ကျောက်တော်ကြီးဘုရားပွဲ | Kyout-tau2-ji3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 မန္တလေး | Mandalay |
October 19 - November 21 | Thadingyut Abhidhamma Holidays သီတင်းကျွတ် | dtha1-din3-joot Lantern Festival နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Full moon night is on the October 20th. |
October 19 - October 20 | Kyaukse Elephant Dance Festival ကျောက်ဆည်ဆင်ကပွဲ | kyout-hseare2 hsin2 ka1 pweare3 ကျောက်ဆည် | Kyaukse |
October 20 | Kyaikhtiyo (Golden Rock) Pagoda Festival ကျိုက်ထီးရိုးဘုရားပွဲ | kjite hti3 yo3 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 ကျိုက်ထို | Kyaik Hto Several days. |
October 21 - November 18 | Ka Htain (Kathina) Festival ကထိန် | ka1-htain2 Festival နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Exact date varies from place to place. Anyday between Thadingyut to Dazaungdaing. |
November 13 | Hot-air Balloon Festival တောင်ကြီး၊ ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် | Taunggyi, Shan State around Inle Lake region |
November 17 | Robe Weaving Festival မသိုးသင်္ကန်းရက်ပြိုင်ပွဲ | ma1-tho3 thin2-gun3 yet pyine2 pweare3 All night long monks' robe weaving competition. ရွှေတိဂုံ၊ ရွှေဘုန်းပွင့်၊ ကျိုက္ကဆံ၊ ဗိုလ်တထောင် | Shwedagon Pagoda, Shwe Phone Pwint, Kyaik Ka San, Botahtaung |
November 17 - November 18 | Dazaungdaing Lantern Festival တန်ဆောင်တိုင် | Ta1-zoun2 Dine2 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
November 18 | Offering of 9,000 Candles ဆီမီးကိုးထောင်ပူဇော်ပွဲ | hsi2-mi3 ko3-htoun2 pu2-zau2 pweare3 ကိုးထပ်ကြီးဘုရား | Koe Htut Gyi Pagoda, Yangon |
November 18 | Kaung Hmu Tau Pagoda Festival ကောင်းမှုတော်ဘုရားပွဲ | koun3-hmu1-dau2 pfa1-ya3 pweare3 စစ်ကိုင်း | Sagaing |
November 28 | National Day အမျိုးသားနေ့ | a-myo3-dtha3 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide On the 10th day after the full moon day of တန်ဆောင်မုန်း | da1-zoun2-mone3. |
December 04 | Ethnic Shan New Year ရှမ်းနှစ်သစ်ကူးပွဲတော် | shun3 hnit-thit-ku3 pweare3 dau2 တောင်ကြီး၊ ရှမ်းပြည်နယ် | Taunggyi, Shan State On the first waxing day of the month of နတ်တော် | na1-dau2 |
December 04 | Ethnic Pa-O New Year ပအို (ပအိုဝ်း) နှစ်သစ်ကူးပွဲတော် | pa1-o2 hnit-thit-ku3 pweare3 dau2 သထုံ၊ မွန်ပြည်နယ် | Thaton, Mon State On the first waxing day of the month of နတ်တော် | na1-dau2 Seventh largest ethnic minority reside in Kayin, Kayah, and Mon States. |
December 18 | Battle Going Celebrations စစ်ထွက်ပွဲ | sit htwet pweare3 တောင်ပြုန်း၊ ပုသိမ်မြို့နယ် | Taung Pyong, Pathein On the full moon day of နတ်တော် | na1-dau2 |
December 24 - December 25 | Christmas နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide Christmas eve is now a public holiday. |
December 31 | New Year's Eve နိုင်ငံတကာနှစ်သစ်ကူးအကြိုနေ့ | nine2-ngan2 da1-ga2 hnit-thit-ku3 a-kjo2 nay1 နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ | Nationwide |
Festivals, Holidays & Celebrations in Myanmar
Here is What Myanmar Thingyan looks like. I made this video.
Water festivals သင်္ကြန် | thin3-jan2 followed by Burmese New Year နှစ်သစ်ကူး | hnit-thit-ku3 around Mid-April are probably the most enjoyable and the most celebrated Myanmar holidays. There used to be as many as 10 straight holidays including Saturday and Sunday.
Starting from 2018, it was reduced to 5 days including weekends so that the fun does not disrupt official government business for a lengthy period. And then came 2020 when streets of Yangon eerily looked like a ghost town due to Covid-19 and stay-at-home order. If you plan to be in downtown Yangon in any other "normal" year, it is strongly advised against taking a flight during the water festivals, as the main roads to the Yangon International Airport from your hotel will be all clogged. Oh, yes, be prepared to get splashed by water if you go out in the street.
How do you wish a "Happy New Year" to a Burmese? Good Question. I guess Burmese people don't waste time wishing because we know for sure we are going to be happy, and New Year day will surely come whether you wish or not. Radio DJ's might say မင်္ဂလာနှစ်သစ်ကူးပါ | min2-ga1-la2 hnit thit ku3 ba2, but it is not a common collquial usage that Burmese people will say to each other.
Myanmar Traditions Once MoreGive me once more in front of live audience. The ladies are dancing traditional Myanmar synchronized "Yain" Dance in tune with modern drum beats. This type of drum beat has become a norm in this time of the year. The first part of the song is oldie like from the 1930's. The ending part of re-mix is currently a popular Thingyan Water Festival Song which has become a classic.
Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Wednesday, 12 April 2017
Seriously, there is no Burmese phrase equivalent to "Kong Hee Fat Choi" in Cantonese, "Gong Xi Fa Cai" in Mandarin, or "Happy New Year" in English. You can just say, "Happy သင်္ကြန် | thin3-jan2 or dtha1-jan2, and any educated class will understand what you mean. You can expect song and dance and water splashing to continue for five days before the New Year Day.
Myanmar Thingyan CelebrationsSong & dance continue for 5 days during Myanmar Thingyan Water Festival and New Year. There can be up to 11 straight holidays including weekends. [28 seconds]
Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Myanmar shares Chinese New Year Day, Christmas day, and International Workers' Day with some other Nations as official holidays. In addition, Muslims celebrate Eid Day or အစ်နေ့ | it-nay1 to mark the end of a month long fasting known as Ramadan and another Eid Day at different time of the year for the feast of appetizing curry beef or barbecue mutton kabab using excellent spices.
Those two days are known as Hari Raya Puasa and Hari Raya Haji in Malaysia and Singapore. Hindu folks have their own Deepavali Day or ဒီပါဝလီနေ့ | de2-pa2-wa1-li2 nay1. At least in the old days, I had seen Hindu firewalking ceremonies around that time in Yangon. Yes, you must have guessed it right. နေ့ | nay1 refers to "day" in Burmese.
Kasone Full Moon Day or ကဆုန်လပြည့်နေ့ | ka1-hsone2 la1 byay1 nay1 is known as Vesak Day in Malaysia and Singapore. It is the day of celebration for the Buddhists. This is the day the Buddha was born, reached enlightenment and pass away (to Nibbana).
After reaching enlightenment, the Buddha did not immediately start teaching. It took him about 49 days to comtemplate and review his findings. Dhammacakka means the Wheel of Dhamma or the doctrine in the Pali language. The motion of this Wheel has started when he preached his first sermon to a group of five ascetics. The event is celebrated as ဓမ္မာစကြာနေ့ | da1-ma2 set-kja2 nay1 which falls on ဝါဆိုလပြည့်နေ့ | Wazo Full Moon Day.
Burmese people celebrate သီတင်းကျွတ် | dtha1-din3-joot, also known as Abhidhamma Day and တန်ဆောင်တိုင် | da1-zoun2-dine2 to mark the end of rainy season with fire crackers and lighting up of candles and lanterns. The lanterns decorated in this tradition are remarkably similar to those used in Chinese mid-autumn lantern festival.
In Burmese tradition, Abhidhamma Day is supposed to be the day the Buddha taught Abhidhamma (higher learning) to beings in the heavenly world. Starting 2018, Thadingyut holidays are increased to three days, including on Thadingyut Eve and an extra holiday after the full moon day. Dazaungdaing is also increased to two days with an extra holiday on the eve. Those extra holdiays make up for holidays lost during mid-April water festival.
During those periods, သက်ကြီးပူဇော်ပွဲ | thet-kji3 pu2-zau2 pweare3 are also held where younger people pay respect to
သက်ကြီး | thet-kj13 (the elders),
ဆရာ | hsa1-ya2 (teachers), and
မိဘ | mi1-ba1 (parents).
Kathina Festival is known as ကထိန် | ka1-htain2. It's somewhat like Buddhist version of Christmas with public display of presents on structures like Christmas trees, but the presents are for the monks. Lucky draws for the Buddhist monasteries are held anytime from after the သီတင်းကျွတ် | dtha1-din3-joot full moon day to the full moon day of တန်ဆောင်မုန်း | da1-zoun2-mone3 with money and daily necessities for the monks donated by the lay people. The actual date may be different from community to community even in the same town.
Around the same period, some communities will have နိဗ္ဗာန်ဈေး | nate-bun2 zay3, which is similiar lucky draws for children of all ages.
ပွဲ | pweare3 means festival. ဘုရားပွဲ | pfa1-ya3 bweare3 are festivals held in pagodas at night, usually during cool months after the rainy season, which also happen to be "tourist" season in Myanmar. Temperature in highland regions around this time can drop below freezing point at night.
As for other religious activities Myanmar, devout Buddhists observe ဥပုသ်နေ့ | u1-boat-nay1 individually, or as a group every week, while Christians attend the ဘုရားကျောင်း | pfa1-ya3 joun3 (Church) every Sunday, and Muslims say their prayers in the ဗလီ | ba1-li2 (Mosque) every Friday. ဥပုသ်နေ့ | u1-boat nay1, is further explained in this page.
For those doing research for your school project, etc., I might as well include other historic holidays. National Day known as အမျိုးသားနေ့ | a-myo3-tha3 nay1 falls on the 10th of Burmese calendar month တန်ဆောင်မုန်း | da1-zoun2-mone3 after the Full Moon Day. That's the anniversary to mark the strike against the British rule by the University students back in 1920.
တပ်မတော်နေ့ | tut-ma1-dau2 nay1 (Armed Forces Day) which falls on March 27th was previously known by the name of တော်လှန်ရေးနေ့ | tau2-hlan2-yay3 nay1 (Revolution Day). Back in 1945, near the end of World War II on that day, Burmese Army switched side and fought back the Japanese.
ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့ | pyi2-doun2-zu1 nay1 known as Union Day in English (on February 12th) was the day Bogyoke (General) Aung San met with ethnic leaders (most importantly the Shan people) in the place called Pinlone where they agreed to join the Union of Burma as a trial run for 10 years after independence. Burma was still under British rule.
Unfortunately, General Aung San (father of Nobel Laureate and NLD Leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi) did not live to see လွတ်လပ်ရေးနေ့ | loot-lut-yay3 nay1 Independence day on January 4th 1948, as he was assassinated a year earlier on July 19th. The anniversary of that day is known as အာဇာနည်နေ့ | ah2-za2-ni2 nay1, or Martyr's Day in English.
Myanmar also observes some other events that are not public holidays. Myanmar Women's Day, for example, has been observed since 3 July 1996. The event is organized by the Myanmar National Committee for Women's Affairs (MNCWA), which was founded on 3 July 1996. This organization was renamed as Myanmar Women Affairs Federation on 20 December 2003. Annual awards are given to honor outstanding women with focus on excellence in business, literature, sports and education.
Making a New Year's resolution in Burmese
Many Westerners have the tradition of making New Year's Resolutions. Having a good life with abundance of food, many wish to lose weight in the coming year. Do Myanmar people make New Year's Resolutions? It's like asking: "Do Myanmar people celebrate Mother's Day?" Yes, we do. Every day of the year is Mother's Day. Every day of the year is Father's Day. And every moment of the day is the opportunity for us as human beings to improve, to change, to celebrate life, to start afresh, to appreciate what the World has to offer to us here & now, to abandon what is evil, and to do what is good. With that note, I'd like to wish you a very Happy New Year — every day of the year!
Mother's Day
No, it's not in May and it's not a public holiday. But, with more people spreading the trend on the social media such as facebook, celebrating Myanmar Mother's Day has gained momentum in 2016 in honor of mothers on the full Moon day of the month of ပြာသို | pya2-tho2. In 2016, it falls on Sunday, January 24th. If more people participate in this trend, it will be in the same month on the full moon day in Burmese Calendar from now on. OK, So, every day is Mother's day and we are happy every day, but that day is even MORE SPECIAL and we are 150% happier. Isn't that great? What's more? Some of us will again celebrate Mother's Day on the Second Sunday of May, as this too has become a trend promoted by the commercial business to increase sales.