The Karen New Year ( ksw, ကညီနံၣ်ထီၣ်သီ), also known as the Kayin New Year ( my, ကရင်နှစ်သစ်ကူး), is one of the major holidays celebrated by the

Karen people The Karen, kjp, ပ်ုဖၠုံဆိုဒ်, my, ကရင်လူမျိုး, , th, กะเหรี่ยง ( ), also known as the Kayin, Kariang or Kawthoolese, are an ethnolinguistic group of Sino-Tibetan language� ...

. The Karen New Year falls on the first day of

Pyatho Pyatho ( my, ပြာသို) is the tenth month of the traditional Burmese calendar. Festivals and observances *Karen New Year (first day of Pyatho) *Royal equestrianism, equestrian festivals () *Pagoda festivals **Ananda Pagoda Festival, Bag ...

, the tenth month in the

Burmese calendar The Burmese calendar ( my, မြန်မာသက္ကရာဇ်, , or , ; Burmese Era (BE) or Myanmar Era (ME)) is a lunisolar calendar in which the months are based on lunar months and years are based on sidereal years. The calendar is ...

, and typically falls in December or January. The timing coincides with the completion of the Southeast Asian rice harvest in the lead-up to Pyatho. Celebrations typically include

don dance Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *County Donegal, Ireland, Chapman code DON * Don (river), a river in European Russia * Don River (disambiguation), several other rivers with the name *Don, Benin, a town in Benin * Don, Dang, a v ...

s and bamboo dances, singing, speeches, and the consumption of food and alcohol. The day is a gazetted

public holiday A public holiday, national holiday, or legal holiday is a holiday generally established by law and is usually a non-working day during the year. Sovereign nations and territories observe holidays based on events of significance to their history, ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

History

The Karen New Year was established in 1937 or 1938. The holiday was recognized by the British colonial administration as a

in 1938. In 2017, the two Karen major liberation groups, leaders from the

Karen National Liberation Army The Karen National Liberation Army ( ksw, ကညီဒီကလုာ် တၢ်ထူၣ်ဖျဲး သုးမုၢ်ဒိၣ်, my, ကရင်အမျိုးသား လွတ်မြောက်ရေး တပ်မတ� ...

and the

Karen National Union The Karen National Union ( my, ကရင် အမျိုးသား အစည်းအရုံး; abbreviated KNU) is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), that claims to represent the Ka ...

, jointly celebrated the Karen New Year for the first time since 1967 in

Kayin State Kayin State ( my, ကရင်ပြည်နယ်, ; kjp, ဖၠုံခါန်ႋကၞင့်, italics=no; ksw, ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်, ), also known by the endonyms Kawthoolei and Karen State, is a state of Myanmar. The ...

Hlaingbwe Township Hlaingbwe Township ( Phlone ; my, လှိုင်းဘွဲ့မြို့နယ်; ksw, လူၢ်ပျဲၢ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်) is a township of Hpa-an District in the Kayin State of Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciat ...

References

{{Public holidays in Myanmar Public holidays in Myanmar Karen people Observances set by the Burmese calendar

History

See also

References