Holi Celebration

I was at a cheesy pizza place...Ha! I mean the kind with bad pizza and kid video games, not a place that serves only cheese pizza.

Our kids were having some fun, but for the most part, I could have thought of better places to be. Yeah, I'm not a bad Dad, but sometimes that's just the way it is. In the midst of the chaos, a large family came in with several children, parents, grandparents, and all manner of other relatives it seemed. During the moments between our children eating, asking for more soda, asking for more tokens for the games, and being generally noisy and cute, I saw large puffs of colored powder on the breeze outside the restaurant. Being that I don't normally see this occurring outside a pizza joint, I kept watching.

Several of the members of the Indian family were outside laughing and throwing green, red and other colored powders on each other. Honestly, it looked like fun and they seemed to be having a ball. There were young and old in this battle of who could throw the most powder and get the other person messy. The now very colorful revelers came inside again with smiles from ear to ear and began to clean up with wet wipes...ah, the old traditions meet new (and essential) cleaning tools.

I looked up what was happening on Google and wikipedia later on, and it turns out to be a Hindu celebration called Holi otherwise known as the Festival of Colors. Holi is celebrated during two days of the full moon in late February or early March every year. The first day is signified by bonfires representing the burning of a demoness, and the second day, which seemed by far more fun to me, was spent chucking colored powders and water on each other in the streets. There is obviously much more to it, but the lists of Gods and Demons, and the multitude of variations of the holiday among the different groups that observe it, couldn't penetrate my attention-span-challenged brain. If you want to learn more detail behind the celebration, by all means take a look here.

Hindu Holi Celebrations - This is the Wikipedia article with something of a detailed description.

Holi Celebration article with pictures

There is so much to learn about other cultures and people. I am glad to have seen something out of the ordinary like that while hanging out in a Pizza buffet restaurant.