CHAPTER XII.
HOLIDAYS IN SIAM.
Siamese holidays are very different from those of Europe and America. They have no Christmas, for, as a nation, they know nothing about Christ. Their New Year holidays, strange to say, are not celebrated in the first month of the year, but in the fifth, which corresponds to our March or April. On one of the three days that they then observe the doors of the temples are thrown open, and the people—women and children especially—dressed in their best attire, enter, and, bowing down before the idol, make offerings of flowers. The more wealthy have prayers and preaching at their own houses, when they feast the priests and make presents to them. During these days all are allowed to gamble, and men, women and children engage in games of chance with all their hearts. On New Year’s Day we, in Christian lands, pray our heavenly Father to watch over and bless us and our friends through the year. In this heathen land the king has companies of priests on the tops of the walls around the city proper going through certain ceremonies in concert to drive away evil spirits, and on one of these nights large and small guns are fired for this purpose from the top of the walls every twenty minutes till morning.
Soon after New Year’s Day, and again some six months later, the Siamese princes, lords and nobles, and all among the people who hold any office, however small, take the oath of allegiance. They assemble at the royal palace and drink the “water of vengeance” and sprinkle it upon their foreheads. Do you ask, “What is the water of vengeance?” It is water in which have been dipped swords, daggers, spears and other instruments by which the king executes vengeance on those who rebel against him. By drinking of it they express their willingness to be punished with these instruments if found disloyal. The priests are excused from this service by virtue of the sanctity of their office, but they meet in the royal temple on that day and perform appropriate religious services. Some of this water is sent to the residences of the governors in the distant provinces, and the neighboring people assemble there to drink it.
Soon after the ceremony of taking the oath of allegiance the Siamese have for four days a kind of second New Year, the time for which is fixed by the sun instead of the moon. The priests are invited to meet at the palace for a royal festival, and the people too feast the priests and one another and play at their games of chance. The women bring water, and bathe first the idols, and then their grandparents and other aged relatives, by pouring water freely upon them.
They observe three days of their sixth month with very great veneration as the anniversaries of the birth, the attaining to divinity and the death of Buddha. These three days are a great time for “making merit,” which they think they do by giving to the poor, by making offerings to the priests and to the idols and by listening to prayers and preaching. All classes, young and old, high and low, rich and poor, go to the temple-grounds and make little conical mounds of sand a foot or two high, surmounted with flowers and small flags of all colors.
At the beginning of seed-time, generally in May, the time being fixed by astrologers, they have their Raknah holiday, when the minister of agriculture is for the day regarded as king, because he, as the king’s substitute, holds the plough, breaks up the ground and plants the first rice of the year. He is escorted by a public procession to some field, and there the priests, after superstitious ceremonies, decorate a pair of oxen with flowers and fasten them to a plough, which is also trimmed with flowers. The minister then holds the plough while the oxen drag it over the ground for about an hour. Four elderly women from the king’s household scatter rice over the ploughed part of the field, and leave it there uncovered. The oxen are then liberated, and four kinds of the grain that the people most prize are placed before them. Whichever kind they eat much of the people think will be scarce; that of which they eat little or none they think will be abundant throughout the year, and they plant accordingly.
They have two holidays every year for swinging, when the minister of agriculture is carried by a long procession to a place where there is a high swing between two tall poles. A brick platform covered with white muslin and tastefully curtained has been prepared for him. Attended by four Brahman priests, two on his right hand and two on his left, he ascends this platform and stands on one foot till three games of swinging are ended, which generally occupy two hours. If he ventures to touch his foot once to the floor during the games, it is said the Brahmans are allowed to take all his property from him. The game is to catch in the mouth a purse of money that is suspended within reach of the swinger. When the games are over the swingers sprinkle on all about them water that has been made holy by the priests. This is the Brahmanical mode of calling down blessings on the people of the land. About noon the minister is escorted home by a procession similar to the one that took him there. These ceremonies and games are repeated on the second day. Princes and officers of government and dense crowds of the people are present to witness them.
The Siamese observe a season that may be called the Buddhist Lent, when for three months the priests must not go so far away from their temples as not to be able to return at night. All classes anticipate this season, and provide for them such food as parched rice and corn, also natural and artificial flowers, silvered and gilded trees, and other articles to make their dormitories pleasant and inviting. The day these gifts are presented is called the Kow Wasah holiday. Some of the gifts the priests offer to the idol; others they present to their elders and to aged priests in the same temple with themselves.
When the Buddhist Lent is ended and the priests are allowed to come out of the temples and travel where they please, the Auk Wasah holidays are observed. In anticipation of their coming out, as of their going in, the laity, from the highest to the lowest, prepare clothing suitable for their wanderings. The kings have numerous priests’ robes made of white cotton shirting dyed yellow, which is the sacred color. The people prepare gifts according to their means. The first three evenings there is a grand display of fireworks on the river in front of the palaces, His Majesty honoring the occasion with his presence. The river is alive with joyous, pleasure-seeking people hastening to the scene. Offerings consisting of little skiffs and rafts of banana-stalks are seen upon the river. On these are temples, pagodas and transparencies of birds and beasts, all brightly illuminated with wax candles. They are sent off one at a time, and float down with the tide, beautifully illuminating the river. The people make their own family offerings on these evenings an hour or two before the king comes out from the palace; the floats may be seen all over the city in the river and canals near their homes. When these floats have all been disposed of, the king applies a match to fireworks that have been arranged in boats near, and then are seen trees of fire, green shrubbery and a variety of flowers of ever-changing colors, with rockets and squibs in great profusion.