Festivals of India - An Overview

Overview

Indian festivals speak of India's rich cultural and traditional background. The colorful festivals are an integral part of every Indian. The festivals play an important part in promoting the traditional handicrafts and tourism of India. The rich cultural heritage of India attracts the Western world during the celebration of important festivals like Onam, Holi, Durga Puja and many more. Every region celebrates their festival according to their regional customs and rituals. The commonness in all the celebrations is that it celebrates humanity. Some of the common rituals, which are followed in most of the festivals, are processions in the streets, decoration of homes and sacred places such as temples and traditional and folk song and dance performances. Most religious festivals have elaborate prayers, traditions, customs and rituals attached to them. The elaborate celebration and the multitude of festivals in India, each with their own unique legends and significances often awe the foreigners who come to visit India.

India, the vibrant land of mythological tales, of Gods and Goddesses and a thousand beliefs, has evolved over centuries as a mystic land of festivals. Every occasion you can dream of is celebrated with gaiety, pomp and fevour. These colourful and happy festivals bind the people of the nation across various states and religions in a unique way and provide a spectacle that cannot be be experienced anywhere else in the world.

There is an underlying similarity in many of the festivals as are the stark differences in the styles and forms of celebrations observed by different religions. What is unfailingly common and the joyous reason to celebrate is the various gastronomic and aesthetic delights that mark all such celebrations. Bawarchi.com introduces a special section devoted to the various festivals of India, which is a humble effort to unravel the mythological tales behind many of the popular festivals, unrestricted by any one religion, caste or belief.

India, being a multicultural and multireligious society, celebrates holidays and festivals of various faiths and special interest groups. There are three national holidays: Independence Day, Republic Day and Gandhi Jayanti. Hindu festivals of Diwali, Ganesh Chaturthi, Holi, Ugadi, Dussehra, Sankranthi/Pongal and the Islamic festivals of Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid-ul-Adha, Muharram, and Ramadan are the most popular religious festivals in India. A number of festivals are common to most parts of India. In addition, many states and regions have local festivals depending on prevalent religious and linguistic demographics. http://www.indianfestivals.info Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Concise Background Information on Concerts

Internet portal offers customized answers of general interest

Dublin, Ireland, April 23, 2007 – Amidst increasing confusion about too detailed celebrity news, the recently started Internet domain concert-tickets-deals.com offers an overview of precise facts about music entertainers and festivals to concert goers. Initialising this approach, the makers aim to provide background knowledge to enhance the quality of live music enjoyment as in classical theatres or cinemas.

The initial idea was born in August 2006 when Bernd Miller, project manager from betterdeals.com, tried to find out which concert could be the best for last year’s summer. Confronted with bare line-ups on the festival sites and too much gossip on the celebrity sites, he had to search the necessary festival data first and could only then compare it with each interpreter’s site itself to see if the many unknown groups were able to fit his personal needs.

Exhausted from a six hours search, Miller came to the problem’s core situated in the arrangement of information. He skipped his festival plans to follow this line of thinking and then inferred that festivals in general could be assessed in advance, before getting the printed festival booklet. As a result, people could prepare themselves for concerts just like theatre goers for the evening show. This way, intellectual pleasure would be added to physical live music consumption, he reasoned.

A search engine analyst and web developer, Miller designed a way to organize the corresponding information and presented it to his project group at betterdeals.com. Since all junior members had experienced similar cases when looking for a festival decision, the idea provoked substantial interest. In its leisure time, the group developed the site and tested the installed navigation categories with selected expert users.

Finally, the site was launched in January 2007, presenting handy information pieces on music genres, interpreters, concerts, festivals, and safety measures. Customers can now find all the necessary concert information and, additionally, directly buy the tickets at a glance. First user feedbacks show that concert goers actually feel the difference of knowledge based music reception as supported by concert-ticket-deals.com.

www.concert-tickets-deals.com belongs to the network of vertical sites www.betterdeals.com. This network follows the ambitious aim of providing every Internet user with guidance through the electronic world of products, services, and information. Being active since the end of 2003, betterdeals.com consists of passionate Internet professionals from all parts of Europe and is patronized by Go Advertising Limited, Dublin Ireland.

### www.betterdeals.com www.concert-tickets-deals.com Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Travel to Denmark During the "Year of the Renaissance."

These days, just about every town or hamlet in the United States boasts of an "authentic" renaissance festival. Invariably, these festivals feature such attractions as "authentic" renaissance maidens sporting authentic renaissance-era, biker chick tattoos and renaissance cuisine like Ye Olde hotdogs or Ye Olde pizza slices.

So most Americans know all about Renaissance festivals from their experiences stateside. However, just for fun, let's consider the counterpart festivals in European countries where the Renaissance actually took place.

Denmark, for example, the country that brought us those ubiquitous plastic toys, Legos; has designated the entire year of 2006 to be "The Year of the Renaissance."

Imagine my surprise, a father who has stepped on many a Lego in the dark with bare feet, to learn that Legos have nothing to do with the Renaissance, and were not in fact invented until much later. All along, I had assumed that I was enduring those pesky little toys because it was good for my children's education. Shows what I know.

OK, back to Denmark. The entire country is open for business to celebrate the Renaissance. Check out these excerpts from Europe Travel News on some of the exciting things you can do and see when you travel to Denmark during the year 2006:

"2006 has been designated the year of the Renaissance in Denmark. To mark the occasion, an exciting array of cultural events is scheduled to take place throughout the year in the capital region. Exhibitions, concerts, walking tours and many other special activities, both indoors and out, have been planned to spotlight this extraordinary period in Copenhagen?s history."

"History lovers, among others, will have all the more reason to visit Copenhagen in 2006, when the city pays tribute to the great achievements of the Renaissance. A wide variety of special events, celebrating that remarkable period of its history, will be held throughout the capital region."

"Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, at the seaward approach to the Øresund Sound, is one of Northern Europe's most important Renaissance castles. It is also the most famous castle in Denmark, known all over the world as the setting for Shakespeare's Hamlet."

"In 2006, Hillerød will host a large Renaissance Festival with participants from home and abroad. There will be stands with food, beverages, handicrafts and entertainment - just as there were during the time of Christian IV. In September a parade through town to Frederiksborg Castle will cap the event followed by dancing, concerts and displays of knightly swordsmanship and horsemanship".

So enjoy your travels to Denmark and take in all these wonderful experiences. I'm not sure if they will offer hotdogs and pizza slices at these festivals; but if they do, I'm certain they'll have some Ye Olde Alka Seltzer available.

Oh, and watch your step. Especially when you are barefoot...in the dark.

COPYRIGHT (c) 2006, C.H. Brown. All rights reserved.

About The Author

C.H. Brown is a former attorney who now spends his time indulging his passion for travel and shares the unique travel destinations and unbeatable travel bargains he uncovers on his blog, Guerrilla Traveler - Adventure on a Budget, www.guerrillatraveler.blogspot.com.

This article was posted on January 10, 2006