Blessed Rainy Day is the holiday marking the end of the monsoon season in Bhutan. On this day all natural water resources in the country are considered to be sanctifying and citizens are encouraged to take an outdoor bath to be cleansed of "bad deeds, obstructions and defilements" and accumulated bad karma. Families traditionally gather for a meal of thup (porridge) at breakfast time. The holiday also marks the end of the farming season and the beginning of the harvest season.
Government offices, schools, and institutions are closed for the day.
The most auspicious hour for the ablution is determined by astrologers in the service of the Je Khenpo, the chief abbot of the country. They refer to the Bhutanese lunar calendar (essentially the Tibetan lunar calendar), but the exact method of their calculations have not been disclosed. In 2004, they determined the preferred time to be 4:00p.m., September 22. Citizens who are unable to bathe at the exact hour instead often rise before dawn for a brisk morning splash.
Variant romanizations of the Dzongkha name of the holiday include Thrue-Bab, Thrie-Bab, and Thri-Bab. The holiday was dropped from public holiday list in 2007. The Bhutan home minister restored the holiday in 2008. People would still take the day off even when its status was non-official.[citation needed]
The traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar, combining the solar, lunar, and other cycles for various social and religious purposes. More recently, in China and Chinese communities the Gregorian calendar has been adopted and adapted in various ways, and is generally the basis for standard civic purposes, but incorporating traditional lunisolar holidays. However, there are many types and subtypes of the Chinese calendar, partly reflecting developments in astronomical observation and horology, with over a millennium plus history. The major modern form is the Gregorian calendar-based official version of the Mainland China, although diaspora versions are also notable in other parts of China and Chinese-influenced cultures; however, aspects of the traditional lunisolar calendar remain popular, including the association of the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac in relation to months and years.
The Hebrew calendar, also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as yahrzeits and the schedule of public Torah readings. In Israel, it is used for religious purposes, provides a time frame for agriculture, and is an official calendar for civil holidays alongside the Gregorian calendar.
The Hijri calendar, also known in English as the Muslim calendar and Islamic calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual fasting and the annual season for the great pilgrimage. In almost all countries where the predominant religion is Islam, the civil calendar is the Gregorian calendar, with Syriac month-names used in the Levant and Mesopotamia but the religious calendar is the Hijri one.
The New Year is the time or day at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one. Many cultures celebrate the event in some manner. In the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used calendar system today, New Year occurs on January 1. This was also the first day of the year in the original Julian calendar and the Roman calendar.
In astronomy, the new moon is the first lunar phase, when the Moon and Sun have the same ecliptic longitude. At this phase, the lunar disk is not visible to the naked eye, except when it is silhouetted against the Sun during a solar eclipse.
Summer is the hottest and brightest of the four temperate seasons, occurring after spring and before autumn. At or centred on the summer solstice, daylight hours are longest and darkness hours are shortest, with day length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The earliest sunrises and latest sunsets also occur near the date of the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to climate, tradition, and culture. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.
Cradled in the folds of the Himalayas, Bhutan has relied on its geographical isolation to protect itself from outside cultural influences. A sparsely populated country bordered by India to the south, and China to the north, Bhutan has long maintained a policy of strict isolationism, both culturally and economically, with the goal of preserving its cultural heritage and independence. Only in the last decades of the 20th century were foreigners allowed to visit the country, and only then in limited numbers. In this way, Bhutan has successfully preserved many aspects of its culture, which dates directly back to the mid-17th century.
Iran uses three official calendar systems, including the Solar Hijri calendar as the main and national calendar, the Gregorian calendar for international events and Christian holidays, and the Lunar Hijri calendar for Islamic holidays.
Losar also known as Tibetan New Year, is a festival in Tibetan Buddhism. The holiday is celebrated on various dates depending on location tradition. The holiday is a new year's festival, celebrated on the first day of the lunisolar Tibetan calendar, which corresponds to a date in February or March in the Gregorian calendar. In 2024, the new year commenced on 10 February and celebrations ran until the 12th of the same month. It also commenced the Year of the Male Wood Dragon.
Buddha's Birthday or "'Buddha Day"' is a primarily Buddhist festival that is celebrated in most of South, Southeast and East Asia, commemorating the birth of the prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Gautama Buddha and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition and archaeologists, Gautama Buddha, c. 563-483 BCE, was born at Lumbini in Nepal. Buddha's mother was Queen Maya Devi, who delivered the Buddha while undertaking a journey to her native home, and his father was King Śuddhodana. The Mayadevi Temple, its gardens, and an Ashoka Pillar dating from 249 BCE mark the Buddha's birth place at Lumbini.
Articles related to Bhutan include:
Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia situated in the Eastern Himalayas between China in the north and India in the south. With a population of over 727,145 and a territory of 38,394 square kilometres (14,824 sq mi), Bhutan ranks 133rd in land area and 160th in population. Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy with a king as the head of state and a prime minister as the head of government. Vajrayana Buddhism is the state religion and the Je Khenpo is the head of the state religion.
Lhabab Düchen is one of the four Buddhist festivals commemorating four events in the life of the Buddha, according to Tibetan traditions. Lhabab Düchen occurs on the 22nd day of the ninth lunar month according to Tibetan calendar. It is widely celebrated in Tibet and Bhutan. The festival is also celebrated in other Buddhist Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, where it is celebrated a few weeks before the Tibetan and Bhutanese version.
Lists of holidays by various categorizations.
A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to undergo hibernation or to migrate, and plants to be dormant. Various cultures define the number and nature of seasons based on regional variations, and as such there are a number of both modern and historical cultures whose number of seasons varies.
The visa policy of the Kingdom of Bhutan is strictly regulated under the policy of "High Value, Low Volume" tourism, in order to minimize the effect on the country's unique society and environment. Bhutanese policy ensures that only an acceptable number of tourists enter the country at a time, preventing the country from being overwhelmed by mass tourism and consequently changing its character, and that tourists who do arrive get the best experience and value from their visit.
Public holidays in Bhutan consist of both national holidays and local festivals or tshechus. While national holidays are observed throughout Bhutan, tsechus are only observed in their areas. Bhutan uses its own calendar, a variant of the lunisolar Tibetan calendar. Because it is a lunisolar calendar, dates of some national holidays and most tshechus change from year to year. For example, the new year, Losar, generally falls between February and March.
A Bhutanese passport is a document that authorizes and facilitates travel and other activities in Bhutan or by Bhutanese citizens. Foreign travel passports are issued to citizens of Bhutan for international travel by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is valid for all countries unless otherwise endorsed.
Events during the year 2024 in Bhutan.
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