Year after year in Cambodia, when April comes, the people always look forward to celebrating Khmer New Year, the most important holiday on the calendar, which also coincides with the end of the harvesting season. Usually, it is a three-day festival, but sometimes, like this year, it is stretched to four days. It is an occasion for Cambodian people to gather and have fun with family, friends and their communities. This year, Khmer New Year is on April 13–16. The first day of the festival is known as Moha Sangkran.
Cambodian New Year can be traced back to the ancient Khmer empire. The holiday was originally linked to the Hindu calendar and celebrated in January. However, when the Khmer converted to Buddhism, the holiday was moved to April to coincide with the Buddhist new year.
This Khmer New Year, the kids at Little Hearts have a school holiday. A few children who have relatives will be travelling to different provinces to visit their extended families. But before going anywhere, the entire Little Hearts cohort participated in an early New Year celebration on Thursday, April 11th, right here at our home. As in previous years, the highlight of the party was playing traditional Khmer games, including bet paun, which is much like hide and seek; chhoung, a game similar to dodgeball, except that the item being thrown at the opposing team is not a ball but a rolled-up and knotted krama (a traditional Khmer scarf); leak kon saeng, which also features a krama, but is played while sitting in a circle and has some of the elements of the western game of “tag, you’re it”; and teanh prot, or tug-of-war, which has special cultural significance in Cambodia because it recalls the “Churning of the Sea of Milk,” a well-known episode in Hindu mythology that was carved on the walls and lintels of many ancient Khmer temples.
In addition to these traditional games, the kids also competed in other activities, some of them very messy, like the no-hands watermelon eating contest, and the ever-popular water balloon fight. It was a day of raucous, good-natured fun for everyone, a day that the kids look forward to every year.
Happy Khmer New Year, everyone!