The Songkran festival, or what the locals call Pawaeni Pi Mai Mueang (Northern New Years), is a major celebration with lots of smiles. The children get a chance to throw water on each other without being scolded. It is the time when teenage girls put on their best clothes, decorate their hair with flowers and go out to present alms to the monks and sprinkle water with young men without being seen as breaking the taboos. Adults participate in it as a major alms offering event of the year. They would enthusiastically prepare offering items and carry them to temples.
Songkran day or Maha Songkran (13th of April) is the day when the sun shifts from the zodiac sign of Pisces to Aries meaning that the cycle of twelve months has completed its cycle. The completion is dated on the 13th of April and was designated the New Years day of Thailand until Field Marshal P. Phibulsongkhram changed it to January 1st as celebrated world wide.
The festival of Songkran is a grand festival that takes many days. It starts off officially on April 13-14. the people would however start the celebration on the 13th and continue on after the 15th, especially the children in the outer districts who would start the water throwing from as early as the 10th and drag it on to the 17th or 18th. The celebration is also marked as the hottest time of year so throwing the water is a way the children could have fun and escape the heat.
There are many rites and ceremonies performed during the festival, all related closely to the life of the people and their relationship with nature as well as auspicious beings around them. The ceremonies will start from the 13th to the 15th of April with ceremonies as follows:
The 13th or Sang Khan Long is considered the end of the year. Gunshots and bangs of firecrackers could be heard at dawn. The villagers do this to chase away the evil spirits of Pu Sangkhan and Ya Sangkran. On this same day all houses are cleaned and tidied up and the people will clean their body and wear brand new clothes and burn all the trash. Prof. Manee Payomyong said that when women clean themselves, they will wear brand new clothes and decorate their hair with flowers that symbolizes the year of their birth. For ones who were born on the mouse year, the champa (magnolia) is their birth year flower, for example.
Moreover, a procession of taking the principal Buddha image of the city (Phra Phuttha Sihing and Phra Setungkhamani) through the city to the Buddha Sathan is prepared. After that the Buddha Sihing is taken on to its place prepared at Wat Phra Singh Wora Maha Vihan for people to worship and sprinkle holy water on it.
Some old communities like Ban Yang Luang, Mae Chaem District, will have their own special customs that is hardly found anywhere else. The Long Sangkhan custom is when the villagers come together and make banana tree rafts and decorate them before taking it to the river bank in a procession. The ceremony taking place on the bank is for each person to wipe their face and body with lumps of rice flour as they believe that it will absorb all their bad luck. They will put those flour lumps in the raft and float (long) it down the river.
April 14 or Wan Nao is the day people would avoid doing bad things. They will not scold one another or cause fights. If fights occur, the whole year will be cursed. Besides being called Wan Nao it is also a Wan Da or preparation day for the alms offering to be performed the next day. People will go to the market for the needed goods. A popular sweets made for this occasion are all kinds of desserts like khanom chok, khao taen, khao kaeb, khanom wong and khanom kula, etc.
In the afternoon young men and women will go to dig sand from the river to create sand pagodas or chedis and decorate them with colorful rectangular flags or tungs. People in Chiang Mai would go to the Ping river near the Nawarat Bridge for sand because the water level at that time of year is shallow enough to walk in the river. People in the past would carry silver bowls or buckets down to the Ping and splash water with fun. The sand gathering on the Wan Nao is considered a merit performing and the person will be blessed as much as the amount of sand they have gathered. Some people believe that it is a way to pay for their sins or karma done both consciously and unconsciously like the amount of sand stuck to the shoes when people leave the temple each time. The sand is kept for later use in the comstruction works of the temple.
The 15th of April or Phaya Wan day is the beginning of the New Year. It is the day for presenting the grand offerings. The locals will start their new life by offering than khan khao or rice bowl offerings to pass on their goodness to their ancestors, relatives or friends who have passed away. Rites of paying respect to the ancestral relics are performed along with sprinkling holy water on the Buddha images and paying worships to the temple ascribed to the worshipers birth year.
The afternoon is the time for paying respect to the elders. It is a time to remember the offences they have done and ask them for forgiveness and for them to have a good year from then on. The elders will tie sacred threads around the younger ones wrist to show that they have accepted the respect or apologies and give them a blessing. The elements of the rite are a bowl of flowers and puffed rice, candles, incense, holy water that is a mixture of turmeric water and soap pods, betel nut and betel peppers, tea leaves, cigarettes and snacks along with fruit and milk or other healthy foods. Sometimes clothes, wraparound skirts and checkered clothes are given along with the other ritual goods. A kind of present popular today is giving towels to the elders because they are handy and practical for everyday use. For Chiang Mai, this ceremony is held for the governor too, as a respect given to him. Besides the officials in the city, the outer district officers would set up processions to join in the ceremony. The holy water sprinkling on the Buddha images and the rites of paying respect rites to the elders can be performed many days after the New Years day.
Sudara Sujachaya. (1997). Chiag Mai daen haeng ton than sun klang khong anachak lae silpa watthanatham Lanna (Chiang Mai, the water source and center of the Lanna Kingdom and Art)
(in Thai). Bangkok: Sarakhadi.
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