​Laos

Laos, Hmong New Years (Hmoob xyoo tshiab) is the biggest festival that celebrates the coming new year. The year start in November when the full moon is high in the night sky.  The people would prepare food for the festival.
The New Year will go on for a month. Everyone will socialize, eat and tell stories at night. Boys and girls would court and would sing love songs to each other. The older women talked about life and clothes. The older men talked about music such as the bamboo-reed mouth organ instrument (queej) , flute (raj), and etc.

Traditionally, the leader of the village would cut trees to build a doorway (the door to the New Year) in the middle of the village. The men, women and children walked through the door in the early morning while the old men circle a live chicken above their heads to wish them good luck for the future. The people would go pass the door to send the old year away and to catch the new year.

In the morning everyone will eat and talk. The men would go from family to family and chat. The women would cook and cook and chat. They would visits for the first three day of the New Year’s morning unitl 10 pm.

When the days get warmer, the daughters would dressed in their finest new clothes with slivers jewelries. They would play a ball tossing game call pov pob with well groom boys. When one of them drops the ball, they would exchange jewelries or sing a song (kwv txiaj). The mother would listens to the songs that are sung which are usually about serious love, orphan, harsh life and comic love songs. The fathers would go to buffalo-bull fights or play ball tossing to find another wife.

When the entrance to the New Year (the doorway) is completely dry, the old men would throw it away. New Year is finally over but everybody had enough to eat and this was the time for marriage.

In the United States, the New Year is very different.  You cannot take food and have to have a food-handler’s permit.  The feasts are not given to visitors, by the villager anymore. Some people do yearly sacrifices for the traditional religion but it is very pricey. There are some program with the bamboo-reed mouth organ (queej), courting songs (kwv txiaj) and etc for people to see how they are used. Tradition Hmong clothes have changed, into the new fashion trend. Hmong clothes are now bright and colorful. Clothes are now easy to make because of the materials in the market, like beads and velvet and satin fabric. The turbans are change into hats that are made to fit the head. Some teenager girls do not wear Hmong clothes to the New Year. Young people also do not sing anymore and also when playing the ball tossing.  Many young people do not know the knowledge of the old tradition ways.

 

 

Sources

Xiong, Blia. “Folk Arts: The Hmong New year: The Family and Festival.” Arts.Wa.Gov. 8 May 2012.

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America
Now most Hmong New Year are also celebrate not only for the coming New Year but for other reasons such as to preserve the cultural values, heritage and customs and also to promote higher education, businesses and leadership within the Hmong community.

 

Sources

“SHNY, Inc.” Sacramentohmongnewyear. 8 May 2012

http://www.hmongnewyear.us/hmong-american.php

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The following are adaptations:
• Sporting events for Hmong in the US exclude cock fighting, bull fighting, and kicking matches. Hmong sports in the US are soccer, basketball, takrow, volleyball, and golf.

• Hmong in the US host a beauty pageant, whereas in Laos, true beauty is believed to be within a person and not on the surface of the skin and cannot therefore be determined at a glance.

• Hmong in the US have singing and dancing contests; the talent contests in Laos are to see who wins the hearts of others, be it in courtship, poetic singing, bull fighting, or farming.

• Pov pob in Laos/Thailand consists of lines of women on one side and men on the other; Hmong in the US exercise the freedom from lines.

• Singing and dancing are talents displayed in the US; kwv txhiaj, lus taum (poetic singings) are those displayed in Laos/Thailand.

• Kwv txhiaj fill the tshav qaib venue in Laos/Thailand; loud music filled the venue in the US.

 

 

Sources​

“Hmong American.” HmongNewYear. 8 May 2012