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Losar: The Tibetan New Year - March 1, 2003
Losar falls on March 1 in 2003, with celebrations held
throughout the first weekend of March
By Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, AAV Contributing Editor
February 2003 - 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. Ian Baker writes in
Tibet--Reflections from the Wheel of Life (Abbeville Press,
New York, 1993): "With the same attention that would be given a
newborn infant, rites are performed in the last days of the waning
year to dispell obstacles and ensure a harmonious transition into
the next cycle....One's actions on the first days of the new year
set the course for the ensuing twelve months, and during the
parties, feasts, and gambling events in which Losar abounds,
Tibetans take vigilant care to avoid negative encounters or states
of mind. As one Tibetan explains, 'To quarrel, cry, or lose one's
temper is regarded as most inauspicious, unlucky, and a sure sign
of bad times to come.'"
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.
On the night of the dark moon, new
year's eve, the family gathers around a steaming hot dumpling soup
called gutuk, which literally means ninth soup. Everything
must be nine. There must be at least nine ingredients and everyone
must eat at least nine bowls. Some of the dumplings have surprises
wrapped into them. As the meal begins, each person opens one of
these special dumplings. The object one finds will indicate, much
like a fortune cookie, that person's personality. According to
Rinjing Dorje's Food in Tibetan Life (Prospect Books,
London, 1985), if one finds salt, that is a good sign and means
that one is all right; the one who finds wool is very lazy; coal
indicates maliciousness; chili points out the one who is rough
spoken; a white stone foretells a long life; sheep pellets are a
good sign and means that one is very clever; and butter says that
one is very sweet and easy going. Some families also insert slips
of paper with more explicit messages, making the dumplings true
fortune cookies.
At the end of the meal, everyone
takes what is left in their bowl and dumps it back into the wok,
as well as a piece of hair, fingernail, and old clothing. The
chimney is cleaned and the dirt from that is also put into the
wok. A dough effigy which represents the collective evil and ill
will of the past twelve months is made and put in on top of
everything else. The wok is then taken out late at night and
deposited in the middle of an intersection of roads or paths with
much shouting, ringing of bells, and beating of pots and pans so
that the contained evil can be dispersed in all four directions.
This ceremony, called lue, is done to get rid of all the
negative forces at the end of the year so that the new year can
begin unencumbered.
 On the
morning of the first day of the new year, Tibetans rise before
dawn, bathe, put on their new clothes and finest jewelry, and then
together make offerings at the family shrine of barley flour mixed
with butter and sugar which represents a plentiful grain harvest
in the coming year, and yogurt which represents a plentiful supply
of animal products in the coming year. Each family member receives
a derka, a pinch of freshly made butter placed at the top
of one's forehead, a plate of kapse or fried Losar twists,
and a cup of thick Tibetan butter tea. Then the family goes to
visit monasteries and nunneries to offer white greeting scarves
called katas, food, and other donations to the monks and
nuns. Monks and nuns make offerings to the heavens by burning
great piles of fragrant juniper and cedar branches as well as by
throwing handfuls of toasted ground barley flour called
tsampa up into the air. People visit relatives and friends,
feast on rich holiday foods, drink homemade barley beer called
chang and distilled homemade liquor called arag,
gamble at dice and card games, and sing and dance around huge
bonfires at night. The feasting and festivities continue for six
or seven days.
This is also the time that
households erect new prayer flags. Prayer flags are square pieces
of fabric with prayers printed on them, strung together to hang on
a rooftop or from a large bamboo flagpole. Each flutter of a flag
in the wind is another recitation of the prayer printed on it, for
the benefit of the family.
Tashi deleg!
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