Thailand 2011: Happy New Year Thailand!

April 13 is the Thai new year. This year is 2554 by the Buddhist calendar. Siddhartha (who became the Buddha upon enlightenment) was born 543 years before Jesus.

The transition from the old year into the new year is celebrated with rituals of cleanings and blessings both of which involve water. In fact, in many parts of Thailand, people get carried away with the amount of water used to "cleanse" each other and it is not exactly clean water since much of it comes out of the canals or the brown Ping River in Chiang Mai. This celebration with water is known as Songkran or water festival and it is celebrated with various degrees of robustness. It is said that Chiang Mai's Songkran Festival is probably the best in the country.

Rich came to Thailand and we were able to celebrate Songkran in Chiang Mai. We were told over and over again that the celebration is wild. That is an understatement. Besides the wild frivolity of "cleansing" one another with water, there are more serious rituals that take place in Buddhist temples and in homes.

During the Thai New Year, Buddha images are washed - realistically and symbolically. Many people go to the temple to symbolically wash the Buddha images, but they can also perform the ritual at their convenience in shopping malls and grocery stores. This is also a time to give blessings to the elderly (usually washing their hands with scented water) and receiving blessings from the elderly. During these blessing exchanges, gifts are often given to the elderly. Merit-making is also done by bringing practical gifts to the monks in the temples (food, travel-size hygiene products, laundry detergent, etc). Rich and I were able to join Ken Dobson and his husband Pramote in merit-making and elderly blessing exchange in their village outside of Chiang Mai.