Celebrating Christmas and New Year in Nepal

Nepalese people are culturally known to embrace their guests as the image of their gods “Atithi devo bhava” as many us recite here. Neal has been a virgin land for decades. Its culture has been intact frozen in time since thousands of years. Until the Anglo Nepalese war (1814–16) Nepal was an alien name to the rest of the world when the British tried to invade Nepal. It was one of the expensive war for Britain then. The war ended up in a treaty called Sugauli treaty to which both Nepalese and British parties agreed to.

After that the great britain became an ally of Nepal the royals of both countries have exchanged greetings on many occasions after that. In later years even the royal achitechture of Nepal was influenced by the Victorian Architecture that defined buckingham palace in London and Windsor castle in  Berkshire. Gurkhas then fought alongside the British in the First and the Second world war.

Christians started coming over to nepal during these periods in history. Protestant Christians came to Nepal primarily through the Nepalese who were living outside of Nepal during and prior to the Rana Regime. After the collapse of Ranas rule in Nepal in 1950, Nepali Christians living in India came in, along with some western missionaries. United Mission to Nepal, International Nepal Fellowship and others are a few earliest western mission agencies that came in and brought Christianity. According to the government data, Protestantism accounts for about 0.5% to 1% of Nepali population.

Since then celebrating christmas is not a new thing in Nepal. Not only the christians, people from other ethnic backgrounds and religions also celebrate christmas whole heartedly. They get together with friends and wish each other a merry christmas. So it can also be a great opportunity for westerners to come over and take a peek at how all nepalese celebrate christmas.

On the other hand although Nepal follows a different calendar of Bikram Samvat. Nepalese love to celebrate 6+ new year days that occur in 365 days. No tourist from abroad will feel home sick this new year’s eve too.

Happy New Year 2018 to you all.