Songkran, the Thai New Year

To mention the word “New Year” or “Thai New Year”, lots of people may think of January 1st as it is the international New Year’s Day. Here we are talking about “Thai New Year” on April 1st of every year. In the past, Thai people started the New Year festival with 3 periods. The first period as in lunar calendar calculated from the star constellations starting from the 1st waxing moon on the 5th month so called Songkran Day on the 1 3 April. There are 3 public holidays; Songkran Day is the first day, the 2nd day is Nao Day and the 3rd day is a celebration of New Year’s Festival.

Later on the King Rama V recognized that the usage of lunar calendar was unsuitable and too domestic. He subsequently publicized the solar calendar in accordance with the international system. The 1st of April therefore was announced to be Thai New Year’s Day since 1889 onward.

To look at the original ancient Thai tradition, it was obviously set the winter as the beginning of the year which is December.The King Rama V explained this in the Royal Ceremony of Twelve Months that winter was believed an ending of rain and darkness, it bright as the morning light.

Hence the people of old assumed winter as the beginning of the year, summer as the mid year due to its heat like day time and rainy season as the end of the year because of its forever darkness like the night time. That was why December had been implied as the first month of the year.

Later in the period of the Field Marshal P. Phibulsongkram, he disagreed with counting the 1st of April as New Year’s Day due to the inappropriateness and since most of the countries considered the 1st of January as the New Year’s Day. He also reckoned that if we ( Thailand) accepted the international solar calendar, we should also count the January 1st as the New Year’s Day according to the convenience of communications as well as closing to the 1st waning moon and also during the winter time.

The 1st of January was officially announced to be the New Year’s Day since 1941.

The greeting tradition derived among families and relatives after the occurrence of New Year’s Day. All friends and links started to exchange the greeting cards since the reign of the King Rama VI when he graciously blessed the foreigners from the consulates and his relations in Thailand and overseas. In the period of King Rama V, there was a betterment of sending greeting cards. The blessing words were beautifully written with more meaningful. On the first days, greeting cards were only exchanged among upper-class and high-born people but later spreading to all classes of people till becoming a tradition at present.