To check out Kate’s Adventure to this year’s Holi Festival of Colors go HERE!

Quick! When I say the words “Hare Krishna” what is the first thing that comes to mind? If you thought men with shaved heads and women with long wavy hair, chanting, wearing white robes, and selling flowers at the airport, you’d be echoing my first thoughts. (You’d also be aging yourself, but that’s entirely another subject for another day.)

This is the impression I had until I attended my first Holi Festival of Colors about 5 years ago. You see, right smack dab in the middle of Mormon country, lies a beautiful Krishna Temple, sitting atop a hill on the outskirts of Spanish Fork, Utah. This temple boasts the largest Holi Festival of Colors celebration in the United States…10,000 in attendance last year.  Once a year people of all walks of life, and from all religions, gather together to usher in the arrival of spring, by simultaneously throwing scented colored powder at each other. It is an amazing sight -  10,000 people all throwing this beautiful flower scented powder into the air at the same time. It creates an amazing rainbow of color that can be seen in the sky for miles. After a few minutes we all look alike…like tie dyed people. There are no races, no social classes, no ages, only people celebrating the joy of life together. The feeling of peace and love and happiness at this festival is almost palpable.

According to the  Sri Sri Radha  Krishna Temple website…

Holi announces the arrival of spring and the passing of winter. The festival breathes an atmosphere of social merriment. People bury their hatchets with a warm embrace and throw their worries to the wind. Every nook and corner presents a colorful sight. Young and old alike are covered with colors.

Holi has long traditional links with several legends. According to one popular legend, the word Holi is derived from the demoness, Holika. She was the sister of Hiranya Kashipu (the name meaning love of gold and a soft bed), a demon king, who having defeated the Gods, proclaimed his supremacy over everyone else in the Universe. Enraged over his son’s ardent devotion to Lord Vishnu, Hiranya Kashipu decides to punish him. He takes the help of his sister, Holika, who is immune to any damage from fire. Holika carries the small boy Prahlad into the fire but a divine intervention destroys her and saves Prahlad from getting burned. Thus Holi is celebrated to mark the burning of the evil Holika. Her effigy is consumed in the fire!

Let me just tell you, going to the Holi Festival of Colors every year is one of my very favorite things to do. As soon as it’s over and I’ve scrubbed all traces of powder from all the nooks and crannies (which takes several showers to do), I start looking forward to the next year’s festival. Here’s a little too much information for you. Last year I got beaned on the right side of my head with an entire bag of purple powder, which completely filled my right ear. It took 3 1/2 months for me to stop getting purple on the q tips when I cleaned my ears.Probably more than you wanted to know .

The best way I can describe the festival is to tell you that it is pure joy and happiness. It’s peace and love. It’s a release of stress and an expression of the equality of man. All set to the tunes of a Hare Krishna rock band and flying colors. How cool is that? I imagine it feels somewhat like Woodstock felt.

So if you are not able to make the trek to Spanish Fork this weekend for the festival, it’s ok because I’ll take you along on my adventure next week. Just live vicariously through Kate, I do…heehee.

Take a look at this short documentary made about last year’s Festival of Colors. It’ll give you the flavor and feeling of the festival, as well as some background about the celebration.

Or if you don’t have 8 minutes to spare, check out this clip of the countdown and throwing of the colors.

There’s also an interesting article in this month’s Hare Krishna magazine about the Spanish Fork Krishna Temple you might want to check out…Temple on a Hill

Also…Basic Beliefs of Krishna

I went to the temple yesterday to take some photos, buy my powder, and to so see how the preparations were coming along for the big day. It was peaceful, quiet and beautiful, with nary a festival goer in sight. Such a contrast to the upcoming scene on Saturday when the grounds will be packed with 10,000 spring loving revelers.

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And this …

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will turn into this!

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Info about this year’s festival…

~Kate

Enjoy your Coffee Break and come back next week when Kate Goes on an Adventure to the Holi Festival of Colors.

*Just leave a comment on this post, or any other post for that matter, and be automatically entered in this week’s giveaway.