Vesak celebrations with the family!!!

Vesak Poya Day is the most significant festival for all the Buddhists’ around the whole world. Though there are 12 different Poya days’ for each and every month of the year, Vesak is the ultimate upmost important festival of all. This day is very special to all Buddhists because they celebrate their Lord Buddha’s birth, enlightenment ( which is known as finding truth in life) and the passing away of Lord Buddha.

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On this Vesak Day, not only Buddhists, but all people of different religions get together to celebrate this as one nation. But, unfortunately due to this global pandemic situation, the Buddhist people couldn’t celebrate this special day according to their normal plans and rituals such as; organizing sil campaigns, obesrving sil, Going to temples and worshipping, making Vesak Lantern competitions, making Vesak pandols, serving food for the pilgrims, organizing ‘Vesak Dansal’ (‘Dansal’ is basically giving and offering food, drinks like items free of charge for people of the whole community who visits these places ), organizing ‘Bakthi Gee’ (singing Buddhist religious songs) and many other events have been stopped due to this prevailing situation of the ongoing pandemic. At the meantime, the Sri Lankan government has also raised traveling restrictions until 7th of June. Therefore, same as the last year, this year too the Buddhist people had to celebrate this Vesak festival indoors.

However, most importantly, this Vesak Festival made me feel really happy and relaxed after sometime. After some really busy schedules, my husband too got his site’s shut down during these Vesak days and so, we all were at home enjoying the days happily.
This Vesak was our little baby boy’s very first Vesak Festival celebration. Our parents also had taught us the values of this festival and so did we. My husband had bought Vesak lanterns some fully made ones, and several to be pasted. So, on the Vesak day morning we all got together and started to do the Vesak decorations at home. Since my husband was at home, I had some free time, as he helped me with baby’s daily work, such as feedings, bathing and many more. My sister and my husband started pasting and completing the Vesak lanterns and our baby boy was also helping them. He actually tried to tear those papers rather than helping! Lol!

So, however by the evening we managed to decorate our two houses both upstairs and downstairs with beautifully decorated Vesak lanterns. My husband and my father both also decorated our house and the trees with colorful lights too.

Then in the evening we all got together and observed our religious rituals and then we all went to lit the lights and the lanterns. As Buddhists we believe that these are good sins, called ‘Aloka Pooja’ which makes all the surroundings very beautiful and bright.

Then later, at night we all went outside to see the beauty of the decorations and out of all of us, our baby boy loved them very much. He was really happy seeing those beautiful multi- coloured lights and he didn’t actually want to take his little eyes away from those! Meantime, my husband had also bought some colorful Vesak Buckets and we lit them with candles and hung then on some trees. They also looked very beautiful. The entire garden and the house looked very eye-catching and we all were also happy with everything.

The decorations were really nice and we enjoyed a lot during the whole day. With all these, we all prayed and worshiped that, May we all including all humans, animals and all the living beings of the whole world be safe from this pandemic and it to be over very soon!
So, after a very useful and a lovely day, we all had our dinner and went to sleep. As I had online classes the next day morning, I also went to sleep a bit early.
Hope you guys also enjoyed my article and the photos we’ve captured!
Wishing you all peace and happiness too!
Stay safe!
Thank You!!!