Losar — Tibetan New Year

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Losar shrine at Gyuto Center, San Jose. Photo © YoWangdu.

The Tibetan New Year – Losar – will be here before you know it and we want to offer you a “how-to” guide for some of the major new year traditions and dishes. The first day of Losar in 2013 will fall on February 11. By the Tibetan calendar, this will be the first day of the water snake year of 2140.

Losar-related rituals are actually divided into two quite distinct parts. First, we close out the old year and bid goodbye to all its bad aspects and negativities, with activities that center on the eve of the last night of the year, the 29th day – Nyi Shu Gu – of the Tibetan calendar. Only after that do we turn our attention to welcoming the Losar –  the “new year”  – and inviting all good, auspicious things into our homes and our lives.

Here are a bunch of posts telling you, and sometimes showing you with video, how Tibetans celebrate Losar:

	Open your Generous Heart: Create a Losar Shrine In Tibetan homes the Losar altar serves as a prominent, central symbol of a wish to cultivate a generous heart and to invoke beautiful blessings into the lives of our family, friends and community for the New Year.
	Insider’s Guide to Losar Eating Part 1 An introduction to Tibetan New Year food traditions leading up to Losar, including preparing Losar pastries called khapse, the Eve of New Year’s Eve soup called guthuk, and the chemar bo.
	Vegetarian Guthuk Recipe Warm, wonderful, hearty veg version of the recipe for the popular guthuk noodle soup traditionally eaten at the end of the year. For a meat version of the soup, see our thukpa bhatuk recipe.
	Khapse Recipe: How to Make Tibetan Losar Pastries Lobsang Wangdu teaches you how to make the most common and simple Losar khapse, called nyapsha. With video.
	Changkol: To Start Losar Morning off Right Try some changkol, as Tibetans do, for the first dish you eat on the first day of Losar, Tibetan New Year :-)
	Nyi-shu-Gu Traditions: The Eve of New Year’s Eve Rituals for purifying your home and body in the closing days of the old year, including the fun guthuk noodle soup, and the lue, the effigy that symbolizes all the negativity we want to be rid of.
	Your Insider’s Guide to Losar Eating — Part 2 A peek into a contemporary Tibetan farmer family’s Losar food traditions for the first three days of Losar, like the bringing in of the important first water of the year at 3 a.m.(!) on the first day of Losar.
	Dresil Recipe: Easy Tibetan Sweet Rice Learn an easy, authentic recipe for the Tibetan sweet rice served at Losar and other special occasions.
	Tibetan Chang: How to Make Rice Beer Kelsang shows you, with a video, an authentic, easy recipe for drechang, Tibetan rice beer.
	Tsampa: It Doesn’t Get More Tibetan Than This! An introduction to the most uniquely Tibetan food, tsampa. At Losar, we use tsampa for the chemar bo, for the changkol (khapse and chang dish which we will post about shortly), and to eat on the first day of Losar, in pa.
	Butter Tea – Recipe to Make Your Own Tibetan Tea (Po Cha) Authentic Tibetan tea recipe by Lobsang Wangdu. Tibetans traditionally drink a bunch of po cha during Losar, though that isn’t exactly special, since they drink po cha all the time anyway :-)
	Thue: An Original Tibetan Treat Learn how to make thue, a sweet, cheesy, buttery treat often eaten at Losar and other special occasions.
	Momos — Recipe for Tibetan Dumplings The most well-known and beloved of Tibetan dishes, momos are popular at Losar parties, though traditionally we do not eat them on the first day of Losar, as the closed shape is considered inauspicious for that day.

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By Lobsang Wangdu