Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlide 1 HolidayS and feStivalS

Each village and town has its own special festival where all the people sing, dance and have fun. Most of the time there is a special costume for these festivals: sometimes it is a costume with lots of colours and decoration. Other times it is a more formal and very elegant costume. Normally, there is a special dance for each festival, and the people from the village or town know how to dance it.

And, how do you think festivals are in India?

When we imagine festivals in India, we always think of lots of colours and of a lot of people dancing hap-pily to very lively music. And most of the time that is the case; a lot of festivals are like that. However, India is such a big country that its culture and traditions are different in each region. Up North, they have their own festivals, in the Centre they have different ones, and in the South they are also different. Besides, as well as regional holidays, there are also holidays for the different religions.

India’s culture is thousands of years old, one of the oldest in humanity. India has also been invaded seve-ral times in the last thousand years by foreign cultures: the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks, the English... That is why Indian culture is so varied, they have things from all the people that have been in their terri-tory. You can see that in their festivals, their traditions, what they eat…

They also have their own traditions, very old, from before anybody arrived in their territory, and they celebrate them enthusiastically every year. In Andhra Pradesh, for example, they have very old religious temples. They even have their own dance called Kuchipudi! Let’s learn a bit more about holidays and festivals!

Holidays and traditions

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Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlides 2, 3 and 4 national HolidayS

In India, there are many religious holidays. Each region and area has its own very important festivals that people celebrate with great joy, but there are also national holidays, which are celebrated all throug-hout the country. There are three national holidays which are cele-brated by everybody in India:

• Republic Day, which is celebrated on the 26th of January. The first constitution, which proclaimed the Indian Republic was an inde-pendent country, was signed many years ago, more than sixty! Do you know what a constitution is? It is a number of laws to govern a country and it shows the rights and obligations of its people. Do you know if we have one in Spain? When is it celebrated?

• Independence Day is the 15th of August. India used to be part of the British Empire; it was not an independent nation. This public holiday celebrates the day when India proclaimed its independen-ce and became a nation. It was three years before the first cons-titution.

• Ghandi Jayanti, which means “Ghandi’s birthday”, and is celebra-ted on the 2nd of October. Ghandi was a very important person in India, he was called the “nation’s father”. He fought against the Bri-tish Empire for India’s independence, and he always fought without violence and proclaiming peace. He lived to see his country as an independent nation, but died shortly afterwards.

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National holidays

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National holidays

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National holidays

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlides 5 and 6 ReligiouS HolidayS

Religious holidays are very important in India and in the lives of Indian people. There are multiple religions in India: Christianity, Judaism, Is-lam, Jainism, Sikhism...but the most widespread is Hinduism. Most families are Hindu.

Hinduism is a polytheist religion. This means that they worship seve-ral gods or goddesses, not just a single one. There are major gods and goddesses and minor ones. Each village has its own god or goddess to protect it. Hindus pray to their gods to ask for a good harvest, good health, to get well from an illness, to find a good hus-band or wife…

There are many Hindu temples in India. Temples, like the one in the photo, are the gods’ “homes”. There are celebrations like weddings, funerals and similar ones that, instead of taking place at the temple, take place at home; each home has its own altar where the family prays. Hindus follow special rituals to adore and pray to their gods, they are called puja. The puja can be performed by an important priest (called Brahman) or by people at home, at their own altar, like the one in the picture. They usually pray daily for a good harvest, or for something good to happen to them, etc. In this little altar, there are images of di-fferent gods, this is very important. Although rituals can be performed in different ways, there are always common elements, like incense, bells and a very nice spice called turmeric, which is red and yellow. Sometimes gods and goddesses are offered sweets, such as biscuits.

Religious holidays

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Religious holidays

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlides 7 and 8 godS and goddeSSeS

In the photograph there is an image of Hanuman, the monkey god, which is in a lot of homes in Andhra Pradesh. Next to him is Ga-nesh, the elephant god, which is also very popular.

Each community chooses a god or goddess to protect them and an altar is built in the village centre. That way, each family can ask for something special for their members, such as good luck, help or any other thing.

There are other sacred elements in Hinduism. They have four sacred books called vedas. They believe that the words in these books where spoken by the gods, thus they must be followed to the dot. They have other religious texts which are not rules, but which talk about Hindu tradition: history, philosophy, or medicine.

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Gods and goddesses

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Gods and goddesses

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlide 9 SacRed cowS

Another sacred Hindu symbol is an animal, can you guess which one? Exactly, cows!!! Did you know that cows can walk freely in the streets of India and that nobody eats their meat?

Hinduism proclaims cows are sacred because they are like our se-cond mother, when we stop taking our mother’s milk, we start drin-king cow milk. Besides, important food, such as butter or yoghurt, comes from cow milk, and its dung is used as fuel and fertilizer to farm land.

In general, Hinduism proclaims respect for all living creatures and preaches a healthy diet based on ve-getables and animal products which are obtained without causing any suffering to the animal, such as milk or honey. Nowadays, only Brahmans follow such a strict diet, with most other people eating meat or fish, but cows are still sacred.

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Sacred cows

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlides 10 and 11 diwali and otHeR ReligiouS HolidayS

In the festival you can see in the slide there are many lit candles. That is because they are celebrating Diwali, which is one of the two most important religious holidays in India.

Diwali is also called “the festival of lights”, because of all the lit can-dles and clay lamps which adorn houses and streets, and because of the hundreds of fireworks. It is the holiday that celebrates Hindu New Year and it is a lot of fun because people wear their new clothes, make food to share and throw firecrackers and fireworks. It lasts for five days and everything is full of lights to represent the victory of light over darkness.

The other important holiday is called Holi and it celebrates the arrival of spring. It lasts several days, the most important one being Dhuli Vandana: when people use medicinal plants to make coloured dust and water and throw it at each other. That way they protect themsel-ves from the diseases which the change of season and temperature could bring.

There are other festivals. For example, in Andhra Pradesh, in January, they celebrate Pongal which is the harvest festival, and people do pujas, buy new clothes and everybody eats together. Other religions also have their festivals: Muslims celebrate Ramadan, Buddhists celebrate Buddha Purnima, Christians celebrate Christmas... each respecting the traditions and costumes of their religion.

Diwali and other religious holidays

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Diwali and other

religious holidays

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

SlidesSlides 12 and 13 Rangoli

As mentioned before, family homes in India are also small temples: they have a little altar, images of the gods they pray to and that is where pujas are performed to ask for protection and good fortune.

As in temples, shoes need to be removed before entering a home. That way, the dirt from outside does not get inside the home. Houses usually have little furniture, because they are simple and families do not have many resources, and because a lot of activities take pla-ce on the floor, such as eating and cooking, which are performed in squatting position. Sometimes the floor is even used to sleep on. It is usual to see colourful designs like the one in the photograph at the entrance of the houses. These designs are called rangolis and they are drawn to decorate when there are parties and celebrations, but they can also be on the front door as protection, for good luck and as a welcome symbol to visitors. Rangolis are designs of geometri-cal patterns: squares, triangles, diamonds...and they are created with coloured dust.

Rangoli

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Rangoli

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

Slides

Slides 14 and 15 cinema

Cinema shows India’s culture. Do you know what Bollywood is? India’s cinema is called that, it means something like “Hollywood in Mumbai”. Did you know that they make more films in Bollywood than in Hollywood? Cinema is very popular in India because it is quite cheap and because the actors that play the main characters in films are usually famous singers. The films are musicals and are usually very long, they last for at least three hours...They are very romantic and imaginative, with lots of music, singing and dancing.

Indian film stars are adored by the public and their songs are played everywhere.

Cinema

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Cinema

Holidays and traditions Initial primary school cycle (6-8 year olds)

Program School to School

Slides

Slides 16 and 17 muSic and dance

Music and dance are a main part of India’s culture and tradition. There is singing and dancing in all celebrations, as a way to express joy for the festivity.

In India, there are two types of well differentiated dances: on the one hand, classical dancing, and on the other, folk dancing, which is how people dance in the street and during festivals. The latter is more popular.

Classical dance is elegant and is danced more slowly. It is the dedi-cated to the gods, and dancers wear beautiful outfits decorated with many jewels, and bells in their ankles, which rattle when they dance. There are nine classical dances which are written in a very old book called Nâtya-shâstra. This book explains the steps for each dance in detail and how to position hands and feet. People need to study to learn classical dances, the same as here, if we want to learn ballet.

Folk dances are fast, they centre on pirouettes, and they are accom-panied by drums. Families learn from generation to generation, with fathers and mothers teaching them to their sons and daughters.

Dancing music uses drums and other instruments, mainly the sitar, which is a very important instrument in Indian culture. It is a stringed instrument, like the guitar, but it sounds very differently.

The boys and girls from the school with which we do the exchange participate in a cultural programme through which they learn traditional Indian dances, both folk and classical. They can also dance the la-tter, which before were just for the high castes to learn. Dancing is a very important element in people’s culture and identity, and that is why it is important that girls and boys learn to dance, as part of their history.

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Music and dance

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Music and dance