Nagaland New Year Festival

Posted on June 25, 2019

In the remote far northwestern corner of Myanmar lies Nagaland – home to the Naga people who live peacefully on both sides of the border between India and Myanmar. During mid-January, the Naga people travel from far across the region to a chosen town where they spend three days celebrating the start of the new year. We joined them and were mesmerized.

New Year is the time of the year when most of us are in a festive mood. Wherever you are in the world, there is a special time of the year when your culture calls on you to reunite with friends and family, or alternatively to head for the beaches and party islands.

Some of us follow the Pope’s timing. That is Pope Gregory XIII who gave us the Gregorian calendar in 1582 so we know New Year starts at midnight on December 31st. Time to pop the champagne, or whatever you can get to feed your partying mood. Others look at the phase of the moon or the sun, or a combination of both.

In Asia, several countries rely on the lunisolar calendar, an older version of the Hindu calendar. While the Chinese have a moving target around February, the Thai New Year (Songkran) is celebrated on April 13th.

The Burmese New Year (Thingyan) is celebrated in the middle of April according to the Burmese lunisolar calendar, and in Nagaland, the New Year festival is observed in mid-January.

Nagaland. Now that reminds me of a place with a very colourful New Year festival. I have been to some memorable New Year festivals in New York City’s Time Square, London, and Tokyo. Hong Kong celebrates December 31st and Chinese New Year with spectacular fireworks playing off against the world’s most impressive city skyline.

I have attended countless Chinese New Year festivals filled with dancing lions and the accompanying banging of tanggu drums, cymbals, and gongs.

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Globerovers Magazine July 2019