Thin Gyan - Myanmar New Year Water Festival

Burmese: သင်္ကြန်, Khmer: បុណ្យចូលឆ្នាំថ្មី; Lao: ສົງການ; Thai: สงกรานต์, Tamil: சொங்க்ரான், Photo : Edo Vader

Thingyan (Burmese: သင်္ကြန်; from Pali sankanta) is the Myanmar (Burmese) New Year Water Festival and usually falls around mid-April (the Burmese month of Tagu). It is a Buddhist festival celebrated over a period of four to five days culminating in the new year. Formerly the dates of the Thingyan festival are calculated according to the traditional Burmese lunisolar calendar, but now fixed to Gregorian calendar 13 to 16 April; it often coincides with Easter.

 The dates of the festival are observed as the most important public holiday throughout Burma and are part of the summer holidays at the end of the school year. Water-throwing or dousing one another from any shape or form of vessel or device that delivers water is the distinguishing feature of this festival and may be done on the first four days of the festival. However, in most parts of the country, it does not begin in earnest until the second day. Thingyan is comparable to other new year festivities in Theravada Buddhist areas of Southeast Asia such as Lao New Year, Cambodian New Year and Songkran in Thailand.

New Year Donation.

A time-honoured tradition is mont lone yeibaw (မုန့်လုံးရေပေါ်), glutinous rice balls with jaggery (palm sugar) inside thrown into boiling water in a huge wok and served as soon as they resurface which gave it the name.[1] All the young men and women help in making it and all are welcome, but watch out for some prankster putting a birdseye chilli inside instead of jaggery for a laugh! Mont let saung (မုန့်လက်ဆောင်း) is another refreshing Thingyan snack, bits of sticky rice with toasted sesame in jaggery syrup and coconut milk. They are both served with grated coconut. In major cities such as Yangon and Mandalay, Rakhine Thingyan can also be experienced as Rakhine residents of the city celebrate in their own tradition.

By nightfall, the real fun begins with music, song and dance, merrymaking and general gaiety in anticipation of the water festival. They wear fragrant thanaka - a paste of the ground bark of Murraya paniculata which acts as both sunblock and astringent - on their faces, and sweet-scented yellow padauk blossoms in their hair. The padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) blooms but one day each year during Thingyan and is popularly known as the "Thingyan flower"