Holi

✔ HOLIDAYS:-

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Holi

Holi is a famous Hindu religious festival celebrated on the onset of spring season. Holi being a colourful festival has gained popularity all over Asia as well as South Asia and is also celebrated by non Hindu’s also. The chief seats of Holi celebrations include India and Nepal. This festival of colours typically takes place in the 2^nd week of March.

A night before Holi, Holika bonfire is celebrated, around which people gather around, have fun, dance and sing. The morning after Holika bonfire starts with the rain of colours all over the places. People colour each other on this day, have water colour fights with the help of balloons and water guns typically known as pichkari’s. On this day, everyone is allowed to colour anyone irrespective of wealth, knowingness or age groups. Besides filling the atmosphere with colours, people go to their relatives, friend’s homes to apply colours on them and have some fun.  During Holi, different cultural drinks are distributed, and intoxicating agent known as Bhang is habitually added to the drink, Bhang originates from the leaves of cannabis.

Holi is a symbol of victory of good over evil. Holi basically originates from the word Holika who was the evil sister of demon king Hiranyakashipu. This demon King Hiranyakashipu was the King of Multan who was gone mad due to excessive power in his hands and had started considering himself as God. He wanted everyone to worship him but his own son Prahlada refused to do so and continued worshiping Vishnu. Latter, demon king Hiranyakashipu put his son Prahlada under different punishments but he remained unaffected. After that evil sister of Hiranyakashipu, Holika cheated Prahlada into a fire trap but Holika herself got caught in the trap and Prahlada remained unaffected. After that Lord Vishnu arrived and killed the demon king Hiranyakashipu by himself. 

Next day people rubbed the ashes of burned Holika over their foreheads and this ritual still takes place in some places. However, ultimately people started using colours to celebrate Holi.

Nowadays, people have become health conscious as well as environment friendly and thus use of organic colours has been started because ordinary colour can cause skin problems.   People have started making colours at home from fully eco friendly products including gram flour, turmeric, sandal wood powder, etc. If you’re not among them, then you should be. These homemade colours can be easily washed, doesn’t cause any skin irritations and smell good too.