My English teacher would kill me for using Wikipedia, but it just says it way better than I ever could. According to Wikipedia: Holi, also called the Festival of Colors, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India, Nepal, and countries with large Hindu diaspora. Diaspora meaning a large body of Jews living in countries outside of Palestine. The tradition behind this festival is to celebrate a young man who defeated an evil witch by killing her. At the festival they have a huge fake witch in the middle of the crowd and they set it on fire and then everyone starts throwing colored chalk everywhere. I think they intend for it to be an enlightening experience of sorts for everyone, but most everyone just shows up for the colors and then they leave as soon as that is over. It was definitely a blast. I'm pretty sure that for at least a week everytime that I cleaned my ears the Q-tip came out purple or hot pink, every time I blew my nose my snot was purple and my nails were permonantly pink for a while as well. That's not the worst of it. Some of my guy friends' faces were permonantly pink because the were sweating and the color stuck to their faces and died them for a few days. Too funny.
Here are some pictures from the event:
The Witch:
The Witch:
