Puthandu

Puthandu (Tamil Puttāṇṭu), better known as Tamil New Year, is the celebration of the first day of the Tamil new year in mid-April by Tamils in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in India, Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka, and by Tamils in Malaysia, Singapore, Réunion and Mauritius. On this day, Tamil people greet each other by saying "Puttāṇṭu vāḻttukkaḷ!" ( புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்துக்கள்) or "Iṉiya tamiḻ puttāṇṭu nalvāḻttukkaḷ!" (இனிய தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்). The festive occasion is in keeping with the Hindu solar calendar.

Origin and significance

The Tamil New Year follows the vernal equinox and generally falls on 14 April of the Gregorian year. 14 April marks the first day of the traditional Tamil calendar and is a public holiday in both Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The Tropical vernal equinox falls around 22 March, and adding 23 degrees of trepidation or oscillation provides the Hindu sidereal transition or Nirayana Mesha Sankranti (the solar transition into the constellation of Aries). The Tamil calendar thus begins on the same date observed by most traditional calendars in India as in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Manipur, Mithila, Odisha, Punjab, Tripura, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The 60-year cycle is ancient and is observed by most traditional calendars of India and China, and is related to 5 revolutions of Jupiter, or to 60-year orbit of Nakshatras (stars) as described in the Surya Siddhanta.

New Year

New Year is the time at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count increments by one. Many cultures celebrate the event in some manner. The New Year of the Gregorian calendar, today mostly in use, falls on 1 January (New Year's Day), as was the case both in the old Roman calendar (at least after about 713 BCE) and in the Julian calendar that succeeded it. The order of months was January to December in the Old Roman calendar during the reign of King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BCE, according to Plutarch and Macrobius, and has been in continuous use since that time. Many countries, such as the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the United States, mark 1 January as a national holiday.

During the Middle Ages in western Europe, while the Julian calendar was still in use, authorities moved New Year's Day variously, depending upon locale, to one of several other days, among them: 1 March, 25 March, Easter, 1 September, and 25 December. These New Year's Day changes generally reverted to using January 1 before or during the various local adoptions of the Gregorian calendar, beginning in 1582. The change from March 25 – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days – to January 1 took place in Scotland in 1600, before the ascension of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England in 1603 and well before the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. In England and Wales (and in all British dominions, including Britain's American colonies), 1751 began on March 25 and lasted 282 days, and 1752 began on January 1. For more information about the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar and the effect on the dating of historical events etc., see Old Style and New Style dates.

New Year (film)

New Year (Chinese: 過年) is a black-and-white Chinese animation made in 1924 by Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan.

History

It is a cartoon short produced under the "Shanghai Tobacco Company" (上海菸草公司). The clip was an advertisement. It is very likely that the company was actually the British American Tobacco Company given the time frame and location.

See also

References

External links

New Year (A Silent Film EP)

New Year is an EP by British alternative band A Silent Film, released on April 21, 2015 .

Track listing

Personnel

A Silent Film

References