New Year, Venerable Traditions

Thousands of celebrants turned out at a Thai Buddhist temple here Sunday to mark the start of the Thai new year, offering gifts to orange-robed monks as well as thanks that the local weather wasn’t as miserable as in Bangkok.

The annual Songkran Festival at Wat Thai Temple is partly a religious observance, partly a chance to have fun and partly a chance for the temple to open up to its neighbors.

This year’s celebration featured events ranging from devout Buddhists quietly offering gifts of food, flowers and money to the temple’s monks to a bellowing Thai pop singer with rainbow-colored hair entertaining the young and the not necessarily religious.

“This is really an opportunity to come together and have fun and have good relations with everybody, not just Thais,” said monk Sumana Barua. “This is a good way to show unity and understanding.”

Indeed, this year’s festival included performances of traditional music and dancing from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea and India--nations that are either predominantly Buddhist or have sizable Buddhist populations.

But although the annual celebration--which the temple has sponsored for two decades--has become more inclusive in recent years, the focus remains on Thai culture.

And each year, thousands of religious and not-so-religious celebrants come to reaffirm bonds to old traditions and old friends. An estimated 30,000 people of Thai descent live in the Los Angeles area.

“This is really the time to get back to the traditional and to make a fresh start,” said Nat Panyavibul of Sun Valley. “You see people you don’t get to see very often, sometimes only once a year.”

Inside the temple, visitors doffed their shoes at the door and knelt in front of four silent monks.

One family at a time approached the temple’s stage to offer a gift--usually food or money, but sometimes flowers, soap, toothpaste and other items.

The head monk chanted, acknowledging the temple’s appreciation, before blessing the gift-givers by sprinkling them with holy water.

In Thailand, the three-day Songkran Festival takes place before the monsoon season, when it is too hot for farmers to work their fields. In villages, it is a time to relax before the weather cools and rice planting can begin.

So while Sunday’s high of 84 degrees in the North Hollywood area got uncomfortable at times, it could not match Bangkok’s miserable 97-degree heat--accompanied by thunderstorms that rattled residents of the Thai capital through the weekend.

The better weather was enough to cure many people’s homesickness during a holiday in which it is traditional to spend time with family members, particularly elders.

“I miss Thailand, especially at new year’s time, but the weather I don’t miss much,” said 36-year-old Nong Yostrumrong of Hollywood, whose parents still live in a small Thai village.