Fun Festivals World-wide
By tony leather, 17th Aug 2012 | Follow this author
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Possibly the most, certainly the messiest, most fantastic and fun-filled celebration of life itself is the South Korean Boryeong mud bath annual festival.
Fun Festivals World-wide
Globally there are strange events happening every year, like the annual tomato fight at Bunol, in Spain, but the following are among the oddest annual festivals you might ever visit, and maybe worth, one day aiming to go and see.
The Chinese Festival of the Hungry Ghosts - Yue Lan -n is celebrated to mark the day when, according to Chinese belief, a doorway to the underworld opens, letting restless spirits wander the earth freely. In an effort to appease the spirits, fake money is burned as well as paper models of possessions, so passing these luxuries on to the spirit world. The festival is celebrated over two or three days, streets lit with paper lanterns, incense burned to deter ghosts, and fireworks set off in some areas
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Thailand is home to the Songkran Festival - a real fun event happening during Thailand’s hottest month of April. Songkran is actually nothing more than the biggest water fight on earth friends, and strangers, splashing each other with hoses, water balloons , or anything other water carrier. This dousing with water was originally more ceremonial in nature, but has gradually become nothing more than a wild, wet celebration, lasting from 3 to 10 days, depending on which in Thai region you are.
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Thaipusam, popular in Singapore and Malaysia, but nowhere near as enthusiastically as it is celebrated in South India, is a really odd festival which originated among the Tamil community as a Hindu festival, in either January or February on the day of a full moon. Thaipusam means Star, at the highest point in literal translation, celebration marking the day Goddess Parvati gave Murugan a spear that he might defeat Soorapadman the evil demon, festivities kicking off with begin with devotees cleaning themselves thoroughly bathing. Mortification of flesh is the biggest aim of this festival, the more pain endured by the devotee, the greater the blessing of God. This ensures that devotees pierce faces and bodies, with sharp skewers, and try to pull heavy weights via flesh-tugging hooks, so not for the squeamish tourists out there.
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The Japanese, Shinto fertility festival Kanamara Matsuri , held each year, sees people creating giant images, representing the male penis, from anything they have to hand . The worship of these huge penis idols comes about because, in Japanese culture, the penis is regarded as a symbol of fertility, and the gateway to the next generation. First Sunday of April is when the celebrations take place each year penis models made mostly from candles, candy, and vegetables are paraded through the city. The local prostitute girls offer sacrifices to giant penises, at the same time praying to safeguard themselves from various sexually transmitted diseases.
Weird festivals are commonplace in Japan, one of the more bizarre Hadaka Matsuri, when people simply strip off in public, thousands of men appearing on the street of their various Japanese cities, naked, except for pieces of loin cloth around their organs in some cases. This freaky festival is nearly 500 years old, and based on the belief that naked men have more potential for absorbing bad evils and omens, so anybody touching them gets freed from all bad spirits, and evils haunting them, making this a very tactile celebration.
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El Colacho, is celebrated in Spain - also dubbed the Devil’s Jump, in which people put their very young babies onto a mattress, then sit back and watch happily as others jump across them. Anybody can jump over this infant-laden mattress, in spite of of social activist outrage at the offensiveness and potentially deadly consequences of such actions. Spanish people believe that the jumping drives off sin committed in previous lives, guarding the hapless babes babies against future illness, and evil spirits. How weird is that?
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Possibly the most, certainly the messiest, most fantastic and fun-filled celebration of life itself is the South Korean Boryeong mud bath annual festival. Getting dirty is the whole point of this glorious wallow, messing everyone around you up, this gooey mud, considered very effective at treating any skin problems, showing that fun can be of medical benefit, in more ways than one, even if it does mean getting down and dirty.
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17th Aug 2012 (#)
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