29/11/2020
Happy Tazaungdaing to you all.
The Tazaungdaing Festival is also known as the Festival of Lights. It is held on the full moon day of Tazaungmon, the eighth month of the Burmese calendar, is celebrated as a national holiday in Myanmar and marks the end of the rainy season.
It also marks the end of the Kathina (Kahtein in Burmese) season, during which monks are offered new robes and alms. Kathina Festival is celebrated by bringing tree-shaped moveable stands, where varieties of offerings and gifts are hung, to the monasteries, accompanied with Myanmar traditional orchestra bands playing music with dance along the journey during the festival.
On the day, streets are also packed with alm-offering for monks and Satuditha meal serving for people as part of merit-makings.
At night of the full-moon day, Myanmar people have a salad of Mezali, flower-buds of the tree with full of medical values, usually boiled and seasoned with sesames, groundnut, fried garlic and other ingredients, in accordance with the country's traditional belief.
All houses and streets in cities and towns are brilliantly illuminated. Pagodas are also crowed with people doing meritorious deeds (but not this year coz of Covid 19).
In many parts of Myanmar, hot air balloons lit with candles, are released to celebrate the full moon day.
Among Tazaungdaing festivals, Taunggyiβs hot-air balloons and firework-launching competition is the most prominent festival. The origin of Taunggyiβs hot-air balloons contest dates back to 1894, when the British first held hot air balloon competitions in Taunggyi, Shan State.
