Cultures throughout the world, from Mexico to the Buddhist and Taoist traditions of China, have long used celebratory festivals in order to show respect for their dead.
One such festival, Pee Ta Khon ("Ghost Festival") occurs annually in Dan Sai, located in the Loei province of Isan, Thailand. While the festivities' dates are divined by the revered sages of the town (the maw duu), they generally fall between the months of March and July.
The celebrations have their origins in both agrarian fertility rites, and Buddhist culture: on tale of Buddha, contained within the Jakata, describes one of Buddha’s journeys as being so long that he was thought dead. Upon his eventual return, jubilant eruptions resounded, which were thought capable of waking the dead. Today, this tradition is carried on through the townspeople adorning of wild, colorful masks and headpieces, which are constructed from dried rice husks and the wood of the coconut tree, which are then manipulated into surreal and demonic images. Their bearers parade in vibrantly-colored costumes and wield phallic swords as a symbol of power and strength against the Phra U-pakut, a spirit which presides over the Mun River. Men and women—dressed more conventionally in white linen and silk—form a dance circle to the sounds of frenetic percussion and bamboo harmonicas.
Such energy and color is brought the Ghost Festival, completely removed from the West’s drab and somber funeral customs and imagery. Surely a more powerful and reverential relationship to the deceased members of one’s culture speaks to those societies’ more cyclical perspective on time’s passage. They are not really perceived as “gone,” as everything is connected. Pee Ta Khon, like many other festivals of its kind around the world, is a relevant lesson in celebrating the lives lived, rather than mourning death. While no similar rituals are sanctioned in the United States, how can the participants of such festivities reengineer our cultural perceptions of life and death?
