Happy Losar (Tibetan New Year)!!

The word Losar is a Tibetan word for New Year. LO means year and SAR means new.

Tibetan New Year is the most important festival in Tibet. It is an occasion when Tibetan families reunite and expect a better coming year. Known as Losar, the festival starts from 1st to 3rd of the 1st Tibetan month. Specially made offerings are offered to family shrine deities; doors are painted with religious symbols; other painstaking jobs are done to prepare for the event.

Tibetan New Year, or Losar, begins on the new moon in February or March, the time of the first spring thaw on the high plains of Tibet. It is usually close to, but not necessarily the same day as, Chinese New Year. The Tibetan calendar runs in 60 year cycles, each year represented by one of the twelve animals (same as Chinese) and one of the elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth).

For Tibetans, the start of the new year is a sacred time, a time to be with family and with one's faith. It is also a joyous time of feasting and celebration. However, because it is a time of transition, the ending of one yearly cycle and the beginning of a new one, it is also an uncertain and ambiguous time, a moment of great danger. Careful attention and the common exertion of all positive forces in the community are required to ensure that the passage into the new year will turn out fortuitously.

The celebration of Losar begins in the days leading up to the actual new year's day. During this time, debts are settled, quarrels are resolved, new clothes are made, houses and monasteries alike are cleaned from top to bottom, walls are painted, stone steps are rubbed and oiled, and dozens and dozens of kapse (fried Losar twists) are made. The family's best carpets and finest silver are brought out. Good luck signs are placed in strategic locations. Butter lamps are lit. Flowers are placed on altars. Piles of juniper, cedar, rhododendron, and other fragrant branches are prepared for burning as incense.

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