Changing Loshar celebration

Since time immemorial we have been celebrating festivals across the hills, mountain and plains of our country. Couple of day before the country celebrates Shivaratri, the great Hindu festival, when people from different religion and culture including foreigners rejoice it with delight. Today is, Gyalpo Losar — the celebration of Tibetan New Year. This losar is mainly celebrated by Sherpa, Tamang, Bhutia and Yolmo. Different communities and different places have their unique way of celebration. Traditionally, Gyalpo Losar is observed for almost two weeks. Special celebrations take place during first three days. First day beverage called changkol is made from chhaang (a Tibetan cousin of beer), second day is the main new year and the following day people gather together to have feast.

It is well recognized fact that festivals, many festivals are remolding traditional practices into new mode. Festivals, in globalize context, are used to create new form of communal discourse and sustain cultural identity in international arena. Such social tendency to amalgamate Loshar with modern culture has shrinkage its real value.

Before Loshar was celebrated by all respective ethnic people, regardless of their socio-economic background. However, over the years, as globalization and modernization has taken over our society and every traditional practices has become monetized. Back then in village, I still remember the hustle-bustle gathering, ritual and traditional folk dance in my neighbor’s patio, during Losar. But today, people will rather attain commercial concert in name of festival and buy double priced liquor or snacks from stalls. The spirit of Loshar seems to have been lost. Singing folks, homemade liquor, cultural costume have all become nostalgia. Earlier, people used to be looking forward to Loshar as festivals with great anticipation but now this festivals seem to exist opportunity for some liquor owners to advertise their brand. At some point in future Nepalese may even forget the reason behind celebrating Loshar.

When we think of festivals the one thing every specific group recall is the values and history linked with it. As with every phenomenal change, the passage of time, rising globalization and thriving economy has had great impact on the way of our festivals celebrations today. Today people have better lifestyle and can afford luxuries of having nice meal, buying new clothes, entertainment etc. throughout the year rather than wait for the festivals to enjoy such privileges.

The extent to which people infuse eastern festival with Western trend is closely to age and place of residence. The young generation in capital and other developed cities are more likely to tail western attitude, fashion and trends than those in distant villages.

On the surface, certain feature of the Western/Eastern cultural celebration have so mingled that its seems hard to distinguish them. For example, ‘holi’ in Basantapur is celebrated more like ‘la tomatina ‘festival.

The traditional ways of festivals celebrations were far better than the filthy commercial and western ways that our festivals celebrations are getting transformed into. On the name of modernism, slowly and gradually we are cultivating our festivals in western ground. Which literally means, that a certain indigenous cultural element of Loshar is substituted by thriving western lifestyle, and the functional context of the former (traditional Loshar) is taken over by the latter (western influence).