Happy New Black Water Snake Year 2013 !

Happy New Black Water Snake Year 2013 !

On February 11, 2013 Buddhists around the world celebrate New Year according to the Buddhist calendar, the year of the Black Water Snake.  Tibetan New Year, or Losar (sometimes known as Losar Gyalpo – Imperial New Year) is celebrated for a maximum of 2 weeks, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Usually, during these days you can see many interesting things like animals and ritual dancing skeletons, black hats dance, dance with swords, battle stages between good and evil, fire performances and a mystery spectacle Tsam, with different historical and mythological characters.

For Buddhists Losar is the sacred period that should be devoted to family, feasts and celebrations. In order for the coming year to be successful, at the end of the finishing year it is good to do a spring cleaning in the house and paint it with fresh paint.

Homes are decorated with lights, and the roofs of homes with decorative umbrellas and prayer flags. The walls, pillars and beams of the house, and even the yard are decorated with drawings made of a special paint with flour or batter.

They represent different characters that are bringing luck such as the moon, the sun, or a flower or a vase. Also to decorate people use small flashlights and juniper branches, attached to the door. People throw out of their homes last year’s debris and junk, as it is considered a bad thing to enter the New Year with old trash and dirt.

In some areas, people make in advance a small sculpt,  a small figure named Linga, tying to it  pieces of expensive cloth, ribbons, coins and all sorts of decorations. Then, all family members perform a special rite, conjuring spirits of grief and unhappiness to  enter into Linga. On the last day of the last month of the old year a specially invited Lama comes, he takes the figure and burns it in a specially prepared fire.


To entertain family and friends, Tibetans bake mountains of cakes, and also some special buns for a divination, which are stuffed with a variety of items: chips, chunks of coal, scraps of paper, yak hair, medicinal roots, rice and even lumps of manure, or salt.

If a person finds a paper in his bun  in the coming year