Sri Lankan New Year Festival

Sri Lankan New Year Festival is named as “Sinhala Hindu aluth aurudda”. Traditional Sri Lankan new year take place in 14th of April of each year. Sri Lankans celebrate the transition of the Sun from Pisces to Aries. During this period, Sri Lankans get at least three to five days of vacation.

This is a huge event, which is celebrated all over the country regardless of the religion. Lots of events, following the traditional rituals. Everyone celebrate this event by respecting the culture of the country.

These events would be taken place in each house.

Important traditions of the New Year

Generally, Sri Lankans clean all the houses and repaint them, again, before the new year. Then they prepare different types of traditional Sri Lankan sweets such as Kaum, Kokis, Aluwa etc. The day before the new year they take a bath and prepare themselves to go to the temple and pray. On 14th of April when the sun raises dawn everyone gets ready to organise the new year activities. When the sun rises, they start to boil the coconut milk in the house in order to wish the prosperity and the happiness to the whole family and the nation. Then they start to cook the milk rice, which is a famous meal in Sri Lanka. Then youngers and elders share gifts with each other and start to eat.

According to the tradition, most of the Sri Lankan families send sweets and gifts to the neighbors to enhance the peace and harmony between each other. After following all the rituals, the younger generation go to elder relative’s places and wish them a new year by worshiping to elders according to Sri Lankan tradition.

Traditional new year meals and sweets

Milk rice – which is the main meal of the new year. It is prepared by using coconut milk and rice. Normally, Sri Lankan prefer to eat it with lunumiris, which is a spicy paste, prepared by chili flakes and onions. But, according to our preferences we can eat milk rice with banana, sugar, honey and many other sweet things.

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Basically, Kaum, Kokis, Aluwa, Munkaum, Athirasa are the most famous sweets during this period. But today, Sri Lankans prepare different types of cakes and other European sweets in order to celebrate this event.

New Year games

Young people organize traditional new year games around the island regardless of the nationality and the religion. If you are in Sri Lanka during this period, I recommend you to taste Sri Lankan sweets and participate in new year games.

Traditional new year games are named as Kaba adima, grees gahe nagima, kana mutti bidim etc. At the end of these events, winners receive the gifts. Although I have mentioned the traditional games above, there are lot of new games such as catching the egg, filling the water to the bottle, etc.

Kaba adima- this is an event which took place among the strongest men in the ancient past to test their strength. But today, men and women participate in this game. There are two groups made up of at least ten contestants. There are 2 groups, made up of at least 10 competitors. One team is surrounded by a rope and the opposing team must pull the rope in their direction in order to bring the other team back to their side. Thus the strongest team will be a winner at the end.

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Greese gahe nagima- there is a huge tree without branches and leaves with a huge layer of slippery. Then on the top of this tree, there is a red flag which should be taken by the participants after climbing up the tree. The one who gets this flag will be the winner of the event.

Kana mutti bidima - there are several pots filled by different things such as water, sweets, flowers, etc. All the pots have been hanged on the top of a bar and the contestants have to hit the pot with a stick after folding their eyes. Then, when the contestant hit the right pot, which is the one with the flowers, he wins the game.

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Aurudu kumariya therime - This is a famous event among young beauties from the ancient times. All the young girls can participate in a beauty pageant wearing the traditional Sri Lankan dress. The most beautiful lady will be the winner of this game, called "Aurudukumera", which means the prince of new year.

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All these games were created in the ancient past to increase the peace and harmony between people and also to show the strengths of the men, while ladies show their beauty and the cooking abilities.

Dress

During the last decades, Sri Lankans wear traditional dresses on the new year day even if the youngest generation in nowadays world does not follow the tradition. But still we can see these dress codes in the rural Sri Lankan villages even today. However, people are tending to wear the recommended colour, given by the astrologist, on the new year day.

If you are going to visit Sri Lanka during the new year season, you can discover lot of fun activities and traditional meals, Sri Lankan culture and the tradition.