Celebrating Diwali: Shine On and Prosper
My daughter and I don’t need much of an excuse to get out the craft supplies. Today we learned about India and studied its biggest and most important holiday of the year… Diwali.
Diwali is a religious holiday observed by people practicing Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism that lasts five days. The name comes from the Sanskrit term dipavali, meaning “row of lights.” The festival generally symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. People celebrate Diwali by lighting little earthen oil lamps to mark the victory of light over darkness.
It’s a lot like the festival of lights that we made Chinese Lanterns for, so today I thought we’d make those lanterns again but with an Indian spin.
First we found some short squatty jars. Usually Diwali lamps are clay lanterns for oil and I thought smaller jars would represent that better. Of course I’m not about to craft with hot oil, so we opted for small jars with tea lights in them. Then I found some soft-colored tissue paper and some miscellaneous decorative items from my sewing stash. Sequins, rick rack…whatever caught my fancy.
We painted the jars with a few generous strokes of white Elmer’s glue and then gently wrapped strips of the tissue paper around the jars.
Then we added another coat of glue (not too much) and some sequins and decorative rick rack. This is an excellent exercise for developing kids’ fine motor skills and also great for some quiet time for mommies. My daughter spent a good twenty minutes completely engrossed in positioning her sequins just right.
Then we lit our tea lights and enjoyed the soft glow of prosperity because that is what Diwali is about. We might not be celebrating the bounty of our harvest like they do in India (Diwali is also an official holiday in Nepal, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Mauritius, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Myanmar , Fiji , and Suriname) but we can definitely celebrate how wonderful it is to live in a country where we have the luxury of free time to craft!
Sources:
- Diwali: Festival of Lights from National Geographic Kids
- Diwali: Definition and Facts by Brittanica
- Here’s how India is celebrating Diwali from NPR
- Diwali on Wikipedia
