Thadingyut, the Festival of Lights
Myanmar’s full-moon night is Thadingyut, which marks the end of Buddhist Lent and is its own festival on its own date rather than a version of Mid-Autumn. What it shares is the shape of the evening: darkness, and then a very large number of very small lights. Houses, monasteries and whole streets are lined with oil lamps and candles, which is why the first picture in this set is simply a thousand of them.
The other thing Thadingyut is for is thanking people — parents, teachers, elders — with kadaw, a bow of respect and apology. Several of these pages are about that rather than about lanterns: a monk’s bowl, a shared umbrella, a teacher being thanked, a promise kept. They colour the same as anything else and they give a child something to ask about.
