Share Tamu Lhosar 30th December 2020 Abiding the lunar calendar Tamang, Magar, Gurung and other Himalayan communities of Nepal celebrate Tamu Lhosar as their New Year during the month of December. Monasteries are attractively adorned with colorful decorative items. People take blessings from monks for their progress, prosperity and happiness. Each home raises a flag on top of its roof. A party is organized at home and invitations are forwarded to relatives and friends. Delicious food, music and dance become the essence of party. Greetings and gifts are exchanged.
Families prepare for Losar some days in advance by thoroughly cleaning their homes; decorating with fragrant flowers and their walls with auspicious signs painted in flour such as the sun, moon, or a reversed swastika; and preparing cedar, rhododendron, and juniper branches for burning as incense. Debts are settled, quarrels are resolved, new clothes are acquired, and special foods such as kapse (fried twists) are made. A favorite drink is chang (barley beer) which is served warm. Because the words "sheep's head" and "beginning of the year" sound similar in Tibetan, it is customary to fashion a sheep's head from colored butter as a decoration. Another traditional decoration that symbolizes a good harvest is the phyemar ("five-grain bucket"), a bucket with a wooden board that creates two vertical halves within. This bucket is filled with zanba (also known as tsamba, roasted qingke barley flour) and barley seeds, then decorated with barley ears and colored butter.[4]
Tamu Lhosar is an optional holiday. Employment and holiday laws in Nepal allow employees to choose a limited number of holidays from a list of optional holidays. Some employees may choose to take the day off on this day, however, most offices and businesses remain open.
In cities or urban areas, ethnic organizations take initiatives to celebrate Lhosar in the grandest way possible. Sports events, interaction, cultural rallies and cultural shows are organized. People wear traditional dresses, gather in public places and extend best wishes to each other. In the recent years, ethnic organizations are using Lhosar as an opportunity to assert their identity, too. They rightly believe it is an opportunity to make the state understand that they are as important part of the country as other castes.
Tamu Lhosar 30th December 2020 Abiding the lunar calendar Tamang, Magar, Gurung and other Himalayan communities of Nepal celebrate Tamu Lhosar as their New Year during the month of December. Monasteries are attractively adorned with colorful decorative items. People take blessings from monks for their progress, prosperity and happiness. Each home raises a flag on top of its roof. A party is organized at home and invitations are forwarded to relatives and friends. Delicious food, music and dance become the essence of party. Greetings and gifts are exchanged.
People take blessings from monks for their progress, prosperity and happiness. Each home raises a flag on top of its roof. A party is organized at home and invitations are forwarded to relatives and friends. Delicious food, music and dance become the essence of party. Greetings and gifts are exchanged.
People from the community, dressed in their traditional attires, come together and celebrate the festival by letting go of the sufferings of the preceding year and wishing for the prosperity and well being of the community in the coming days. There is also a tradition of visiting Buddhist shrines on the day. Food and dance are also a big part of the festivities.
Each year on 15th Poush, I get to wake up with the amazing smell of sel roti. Poush 15th, also known as Tamu Lhosar, is the festival of the Gurung community and is celebrated with great enthusiasm. Lhosar is when the Gurung community ushers in a new year. We divide time in a cycle of 12 years and each year is represented by 12 different animals – garuda, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey, bird, dog, deer, mouse, cow, tiger and cat which are called “lho.” Each Lhosar we bid farewell to the existing lho season and welcome a new one.
During Losar, the Tibetan celebration of the new year, we did not drink champagne to celebrate. Instead, we went to the local spring to perform a ritual of gratitude. We made offerings to the nagas, the water spirits who activated the water element in the area. We made smoke offerings to the local spirits associated with the natural world around us. Beliefs and behaviors like ours evolved long ago and are often seen as primitive in the West. But they are not only projections of human fears onto the natural world, as some anthropologists and historians suggest. Our way of relating to the elements originated in the direct experiences by our sages and common people of the sacred nature of the external and internal elements. We call these elements earth, water, fire, air, and space.[11]
In our family Lhosar means reuniting with all our relatives and family friends. Early in the morning we visit the gumba and do our prayers and receive blessings for prosperity and happiness. The monasteries are decorated with colorful lights. Each home raises a prayer flag on top of its roof. Since most of the Gurungs have migrated to the cities, to keep their traditions alive, they form a community according to their former villages, which are called samaj ghar. During the day everyone goes to their own samaj ghar to celebrate Lhosar with our traditional food and clothes. The men wear Bhangra, a white cloth shirt-like apparel tied across the chest and open like a bag at the back which was used for carrying things back in the days, and a Kachhad, like a short sarong or kilt. Gurung women, as well as children and adolescents, wear maroon velvet Ghalek and gunyo-cholo, paired with gold accessories and semi-precious stone necklaces.
Losar predates the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet and has its roots in a winter incense-burning custom of the Bon religion. During the reign of the ninth Tibetan king, Pude Gungyal (617-698), it is said that this custom merged with a harvest festival to form the annual Losar festival.[4]
The Province 3 government has declared a public holiday on Tuesday on the occasion of Sonam Lhosar, the new year marked by the Tamang community. According to the provincial Ministry of Internal Affairs and Law, the provincial Cabinet had decided to declare a public holiday on Sonam Lhosar that falls on February 5 this year. Various ethnic Tamang organisations had submitted memoranda to Chief Minister Dormani Poudel demanding a public holiday on the occasion. (PR)
Tamus are worshipper of the nature. They celebrate every year as the year of some specific animal or bird. After 12 years, the cycle repeats itself. They have named 12 years after rat, cow, tiger, cat, vulture, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, bird, dog and deer.
As well as that, the Sherpas are associated with Losar and enjoy Losar in the high altitudes of the Nepal Himalayan Range. Prior to the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, Losar began with a morning ritual ceremony at Namgyal Monastery, led by the Dalai Lama and other high-ranking lamas, with government officials participating, to honor the Dharmapala (dharma-protector) Palden Lhamo.[14] After the Dalai Lama was exiled, many monasteries were destroyed and monks imprisoned. Since that time, Tibetan Buddhist practice in Tibet has been difficult to observe publicly.
