EVENTO TOP DEL MESE
SONGKRAN FESTIVAL – BANGKOK – THAILAND
Thai New Year, also known as Songkran Festival, Songkran Splendours, is the Thai New Year’s national holiday. Songkran is on 13 April every year, but the holiday period extends from 14 to 15 April. In 2018 the Thai cabinet extended the festival nationwide to seven days, 9–16 April, to enable citizens to travel home for the holiday. In 2019, the holiday was observed from 9–16 April as 13 April fell on a Saturday.[5] In 2024, Songkran was extended to span nearly the entire month, running from April 1 to April 21, instead of the traditional three-day celebration. The festival aligns with the New Year observed in many Southeast and South Asian cultures, following the Theravada Buddhist calendar, and coincides with Hindu calendar celebrations such as Tamil Puthandu, Vishu, Bihu, Pohela Boishakh, Pana Sankranti, Vaisakhi. The New Year also takes place at around the same time as the New Year celebrations of many regions of South Asia like China (Dai people of Yunnan Province), India, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
In Thailand, New Year is now officially celebrated 1 January. Songkran was the official New Year until 1888, when it was switched to a fixed date of 1 April. Then in 1940, this date was shifted to 1 January. The traditional Thai New Year Songkran was transformed into a national holiday. Celebrations are famous for the public water fights framed as ritual cleansing. This had become quite popular among Thais and foreigners.
Though Songkran traditions vary locally, the holiday generally starts April 13 and plays out over multiple days. The celebration centers around water—seen as a way to purify oneself and earn merit while clearing the way for a prosperous new year. The day before the festival, Thai people spring clean their homes and some public spaces—a reflection of the previous year being “washed away” to make room for the new. On April 13, they visit Buddhist temples. Here, the “spring cleaning” is extended to the Buddha himself as people sprinkle water over statues of the enlightened one.
Some also make offerings to their town or village’s preferred guardian deities in an attempt to garner favor for the new year. Monks and elderly people also get “cleaned” as their acolytes and loved ones sprinkle scented water over their hands or wash their feet—gestures of respect and caretaking. People show their devotion with ceremonial drums and frog symbols—considered auspicious in part because frogs’ croaking indicates coming rain in a landscape that relies on monsoons.
The remainder of the modern holiday belongs to revelers, many clad in bright Hawaiian shirts, who take the ritual pouring of water to a fun extreme with massive water fights. Local merchants sell bags of water and buckets of ice. Large crowds of revelers fling water on one another using buckets, bottles, and even water guns, chasing one another in a bid to dunk, saturate, and sprinkle everyone they can. The festivities—which include parades, music festivals, and vendors selling grilled frogs to eat in a nod to the Songkran symbol—now draw large numbers of tourists, generating significant tourist revenue and publicity in Thailand and beyond.
Link to informative site: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/songkran-new-year-water-fight
Link to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songkran_(Thailand)