Losar 1st Mchu

Losar predates the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet and has its roots in a winter custom of burning incense from the Bon religion. During the reign of the ninth Tibetan king, Pude Gungyal (317-398), it is said that this custom merged with a harvest festival.

The festival is celebrated for 15 days, with the main celebrations taking place on the first three days. On the first day, a drink called changkol is made from chhaang (a Tibetan-Nepalese cousin of beer). The second day is known as King's Losar (gyalpo losar). Losar is traditionally preceded by the five-day practice of Vajrakilaya.

Because the Uighurs adopted the calendar Chinese and that the Mongols and the Tibetans adopted the calendar Uighur, Losar occurs close to or on the same day as Chinese New Year and New Year Mongolian, but the Losar traditions are unique to Tibet and predate both. Indian influences and Chinese.

Families prepare for Losar a few days in advance by thoroughly cleaning their homes; decorating with fragrant flowers and their walls with auspicious signs painted in flour such as the sun, the moon or an inverted swastika; and preparing cedar, rhododendron and juniper branches to burn as incense. 

Debts are settled, quarrels are resolved, new clothes are bought, and special foods such as kapse (fried twists) are prepared. A favorite drink is chang (barley beer), which is served hot. Because the words for "sheep's head" and "new year" sound similar in Tibetan, it is customary to fashion a sheep's head out of colored butter as a decoration.

Another traditional decoration that symbolizes a good harvest is the phyemar ("five-grain bucket"), a bucket with a wooden board that creates two vertical halves inside. This bucket is filled with zanba (also known as tsamba, roasted qingke barley flour) and barley seeds, then decorated with barley ears and colored butter.