Holi Festival at Papa’s Children’s Home, where all the children have such fun with everyone joining in. They then share special food and celebrate with music and dancing.
Holi is a Hindu Spring festival celebrated in Nepal and India and is also known as the ‘Festival of Colours’.
Paint everywhere!
Bipana loves her cat face
Holi signifies the victory of good over evil, the arrival of Spring, end of Winter and for many a festive day to meet others, have fun, play and laugh, forget and forgive, and repair broken relationships. It is also celebrated as a thanksgiving for a good harvest. It lasts for just one night and one day, starting on the evening of the Purnima, the full moon, falling in the Vikram Samvat Hindu Calendar, which falls at the end of February to the middle of March in the Gregorian calendar.
Holi is an ancient Hindu religious festival, which has become popular with non-Hindus in many parts of South Asia, as well as people of other communities outside Asia. In recent years the festival has spread to parts of Europe and North America as a spring celebration of love, frolic, and colours.
Often the celebrations and religious rituals are performed in front of bonfires, and people pray that their internal evil will be destroyed the way Holika, the sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu, was killed in the fire. The next morning is celebrated as Rangwali Holi – the colour begins!
People smear each other with coloured powder mixed with water, then drench each other using water guns and buckets, and balloons. Everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and the elderly, can be covered by the colourful powdered paints. The frolic and delight with colours occurs in the open streets and parks, outside temples and buildings where large groups gather carrying drums and other musical instruments, going from place to place, singing and dancing with joy.
