Water celebrations around the world
People often recognize that water is vital for physical well-being, but it’s true for human emotional and spiritual well-being, too. Water is fundamental to life, and across the globe, people revel in it. Every person on earth needs water to live, and when we celebrate this need fulfilled, water brings us together. Some praise it through holy rituals, while others honor it through jubilant festivals.
Since the ancient era, people have exalted water. The Talmud, the first book of law in Judaism written nearly 2000 years ago, tells of a ritual in which rabbis poured water from the pool of Siloah over the temple altar. The text declares “one who had never witnessed the Rejoicing at the Place of the Water Drawing had never seen true joy in his life.”
Around the same time, pagan believers from Armenia began honoring Astghik, the goddess of water, love, and fertility, through the festival of Vartavar. Today the festival endures on a hot summer day every year, as people throw buckets of water on one another in the modern Vartavar. (Note: strangers included!)
In Thailand, centuries of Buddhist tradition have created the great public soakings of the Songkran Water Festival. Every year in April, people celebrate the traditional Thai New Year as a time of purification. They slowly pour scented water over statues of the Buddha. Then they cleanse one another’s shoulders, as well as the hands of community elders, with water.
The water symbolizes washing away misfortune and beginning a fresh new year. The festival starts gently, but after a few days, it becomes boisterous as celebrants hit the streets with water guns, balloons and buckets. Then, the festival becomes the world’s largest water fight.
Throughout history and around the world, people have celebrated water for making life–in its countless forms–possible. Water soothes the mind, whether we watch ocean waves roll in or quench our thirst on a hot summer day. With the Coway Aquamega 100 water filtration system you can bring clean, filtered water into your home. Its triple-filtration system reduces contaminants by up to 99.9%, leaving fresh, clean water to enjoy and celebrate in your own way.
