Losar

Losar predates the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet and has its roots in a winter custom of burning incense from the Bon religion. During the reign of the ninth Tibetan king, Pude Gungyal (317-398), this custom is said to have merged with a harvest festival.

The holiday is celebrated for 15 days, with the main celebrations taking place on the first three days. On the first day, a drink called changkol is made from chhaang (Tibetan-Nepalese cousin of beer). The second is known as King's Losar (gyalpo losar). Losar is traditionally preceded by the five-day practice of Vajrakilaya.

Parce que les Uyghurs ont adopté le calendrier Chinese et que les Mongols and the Tibétains ont adopté le calendrier uyghur, le Losar a lieu près ou le même jour que le Nouvel An chinois et le Nouvel An Mongolian, mais les traditions du Losar sont uniques au Tibet et sont antérieures aux deux. Influences indiennes et chinese.

Families prepare for Losar a few days in advance by carefully cleaning their homes; decorate with fragrant flowers and their walls with flour-painted auspicious signs such as the sun, the moon or an inverted swastika; and prepare branches of cedar, rhododendron and juniper to burn as incense. 

Debts are settled, quarrels are resolved, new clothes are purchased, and special foods such as kapse (fried twists) are prepared. A favorite drink is chang (barley beer) which is served hot. Because the words "sheep's head" and "beginning of the year" sound alike in Tibetan, it is customary to fashion a sheep's head from colored butter as a decoration.

Another traditional decoration that symbolizes a good harvest is the phyemar (“five-grain bucket”), a bucket with a plank of wood that creates two vertical halves inside. This bucket is filled with zanba (also known as tsamba, roasted qingke barley flour) and barley seeds, then decorated with barley ears and colored butter.