Celebration of the arrival of Spring – The festival of colour
By Kartik Nair, ResLife Student Assistant
On 8th March 2023, our ResLife team joined forces with other teams in the University and the Students’ Union to organise this year’s Holi celebration for our students in Lincoln.
What is Holi?
Holi is probably the most colourful festival in the world where people come out of their homes to the streets and public spaces to play Holi, this involves throwing coloured powder and water at each other. Every year this festival is celebrated at the beginning of the spring season with an explosion of colours. The major elements of the celebration include bonfires, coloured powders (which are called gulal), eating and sharing traditional sweets which are different in different regions and dancing a lot to ethnic rhythms. While being one of the most exciting festivals in the Hindu calendar the core message at the heart of this event is to celebrate good over evil.
Why is Holi celebrated?
It usually occurs on the full moon day of the Hindu month of Phalguna in late February or early March. People offer an element from their first harvest of the season to the bonfire known as Holika Dahan as an offering to God as part of this celebration. Throwing colours and water at each other and playfully chasing your friends and having fun is inspired by the nature of Lord Krishna in the Epics. Using colours is an expression of the idea that, ‘We need to make our lives colourful; we need to forget and forgive any misgivings we had in the past and one shall move forward’. The colours also have the meaning that denotes the virtue of the soul (Red: Power, Orange: Purity, Green: Love), just the formula that the world needs today!
My favourite memory was how everyone at the event irrespective of their identity, grabbed the colours and got involved, exactly how we would celebrate back in India.
Kartik Nair, ResLife Student Assistant
How did we celebrate Holi?
At the University we celebrated Holi, and it was a fun, energetic, and an amazing evening involving many students from the university. It was a heart-warming sight to witness students from different cultures and regions united on the day, enjoying throwing colours at each other. Most of the students from South Eastern countries wore traditional attire. The celebration started at INB with music and desi food. The ResLife team created the Holi playlist for students and our team organised various games at the venue. Our team coordinated with the Tamil-Mallu Society and organised a dance performance which was a highlight of the evening. It was so mesmerising to watch our students change into white and rushed to the SU space to play Holi. My favourite memory was how everyone at the event irrespective of their identity, grabbed the colours and got involved, exactly how we would celebrate back in India.
You can view our gallery of images from the event here
