Myanmar New Year

Are we humans 'hard wired' to have festivals? Does celebrating them appeal to deep needs in our nature? Whether or not we can answer these questions with a clear scientific 'yes', it is clear that observing festivals is nearly universal in the human story.

Being imaginative, people everywhere put energy into repeating festivals or inventing new ones. These maybe secular, which means they take note of things that everyone can check out easily in experience : weddings, births and anniversaries.

More often, however, festivals are sacred. Most religions relate to groups, so religious festivals lead to engagement through rites and practices that bring them together and, they feel, ennoble otherwise ordinary life.

Anyone who has ever looked forward to big events such as weddings or has looked back fondly to others, such as having won a prize, will know how valuable people find it to deal with the really Big Events that they believe had gone on 'behind the scenes', beyond the senses.

It is by no accident that the English word 'holiday' derives from 'holy day'. Down the ages, across all the great faiths of the world, people have celebrated the major days of their faiths as times for fun, feasting, travel and reunion. As far back as I can think of, people have recognised the need to relieve the monotony of the ordinary working life with special days - days when the normal pattern of work is broken and everyone is permitted, even required, to stop work and enjoy themselves instead.

I have no idea what prehistoric people might have celebrated, but they do have festivals. Festivals are the concrete expression of the religious life form which they spring, and the most fascinating windows into a faith. As well as being times of relaxation, times set aside from the ordinary working year, festivals are living reminders to the faithful of what their religion teaches, and an assertion to the rest of humanity about the value of those teachings.

In all the major faiths, the yearly cycle of festivals not only recounts a story, but reflects on the meaning of that story in relation to the pattern of the universe, the nature of God and the hopes, fears, frailties and potential of human beings. Through drama, ritual, liturgy or dance, festivals repeat key stories of the faith; activities that encapsulate core concepts in a way that can be grasped and witnessed by outsiders.

For much of the year, religions are practised in quieter, often enclosed ways. But at festival time, it is as if the faith is putting on a show, offering everyone the chance to see and hear what is of greatest importance and held most dear to its adherents. These are celebrated with street processions through street after street when everyone and anyone is invited to come and join in the fun.

Such festival in Myanmar is the yearly awaited Thingyan Festival or Myanmar Water Festival in the month of April.