Even a church feast, rather than being confined within the four walls of the church, is normally celebrated with colorful street processions and a carnival like atmosphere. So are the many festival's celebrated by Buddhist's and Hindu's, the two main religions in the country. These street pageants, re-enacting ancient rituals accompanied with songs and dancing, are fascinating to watch.

Thai Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated by Hindus in mid-January. Linked to the sun's configuration, it is to seek the Sun God's blessings for a beautiful harvest. Pongal is also called Makarata Sankranti, the day on which the sun turns back from southernmost point and retraces its steps, bringing back warmth and light into the northern hemisphere.

Like most other festivals, Thai Pongal celebrations continue for days two days before and after Pongal. Like most otther festivals, it is accompanied with fun, games and festivities. On Mattu Pongal, the third day of Pongal, farmers pay homage to the sacred cow for helping them in reaping a beautiful harvest. Cows are garlanded and taken in procession on the streets.

While Pongal is mostly celebrated by the family in the house with a visit to the temple, Buddhists in Sri Lanka celebrate their most sacred festival of Vesak by visiting the temple and later watch various street shows such as marionette shows and pan tomimes re-enacting stories of the Jataka which relates the past birthsof Lord Buddha.

Vesak is one of the most colorful festivals. On Vesak day, the skies are not only lit by a full moon but also with hundreds of brightly colored lights decorating giant panda/s (wooden structurres) depicting the life of the Buddha. Buddhist flags flutter over every home and gardens are lit up with lanterns of all shapes and colors. The colored tissue and wooden frame lanterns, in octagonal shape or in the form of swans, boats, airplanes aand space ships, display the creative talents of the makers.

Vesak day is a public holiday and the event is celebrated with piety, in keeping with the virtues of kindness and compassion to all living things, as taught by the Buddha. On this day people pay special attention to animals. As an act of merit, bulls intended for slaughter are freed from slaughter houses in lieu of payment to the owners.

As temple bells peal throughout the island and drums beat to announce the dawn of Vesak, visitors are fascinated by the sight of hundreds of devotees men, women and children - clad in white, winding their way to temples to observe the Buddhist precepts and offer flowers and fruits, light joss sticks, camphor and incense.

Following Vesak which comes in May, are several other more spectacular festivals which, coincidentally, fall in July and August as it is the traditional Esala(lunar) month and many festivals are linked to the movements of the moon.

Visit Sri Lanka at this time of the year and you will see the streets full of people with unending processions of devotees, dancers, acrobats and other performers, each contributing towards making these events fascinating.

It is the season for Perahera (religious processions), the most spectacular and grandest of all being the Kandy Esala Perahera where homage is paid to the SacredTooth relic which is paraded through the streets for ten nights on the back of a beautifully decorated tusker, the Maligawa tusker.

This mile-long procession, described as Asia’s grandest pageant, is a grand sight as it slowly winds through the streets of the hill capital of Kandy which is illuminated by thousands of colored lights. Dancers in daily colored costumes of red, blue, green, gold and silver perform acrobatic feats. Stilt-walkers in colorful attires amuse spectators with their antics while stately chieftains walk impressively in their costumes made of yards of rich cloth.

The most awaited event, however, at this Perahera are the elephants, as many as 100, walking gracefully and decked in colorful batik cloth. The most important is the Maligawa tusker decked in glittering cloth. He walks over a cloth spread before him as he bears a precious cargo, the Sacred Tooth relic, in a gold casket on its back. On either side two bare-bodied men astride elephants throw jasmines on the elephant to the accompaniment of reverent calls of homage from the crowds. Along with the Kandy Esala Perahera are two other historically interesting religious festivals at Bellanwila and Kotte in the suburbs of Colombo. Though not as grand, they too are well worth seeing.

The Colombo street pageant, theNavam Perahera, is almost as grand as the Kandy Esala Perahera, although not as well known. Drawing thousands of spectators, including visitors from abroad, it is fast gaining international fame.

It has the largest number of performers, as many as 5,000, ranging from kas karayas (whip-crackers) who inaugurate the Perahera by cracking their whips in the air, school children carrying colorful flags including the national and the Buddhist flag, percussion bands, conch shell blowers, stilt-walkers, flautists, drummers and the usual parade of more than 100 elephants brought from different parts of the island.

The Perahera, signifying important events in the life of the Buddha, is held early in the year, beginning and ending at the Gangaramaya Temple at Hunupitiya on the banks of the picturesque Beira Lake.

It is a cultural pageant conducted with state patronage, with live telecasts and running commentaries. Launched at the inspiration of a Buddhist monk popularly known as the Podi Hamuduruwo and in charge of the Gangaramaya Temple, the first Nayam Perahera was held in 1979, growing longer, grander and more spectacular in the following years.

At Kataragama, in the southern part of the island, during the same period, firewalking ceremonies, Kavadi dances and feats of human endurance are performed. A visit to the Hindu temple in the jungle is memorable for its remarkable feats of voluntary atonement, like people walking on burning coal or being suspended in the air on hooks.

In the north, at another jungle shrine in Madhu, Christians, mostly Roman Catholics, observe the Madhu festival. Christian processions, inspired largely by old Spanish and Portuguese rituals, are markedly different from Buddhist and Hindu festivals. Religion really does not matter as festivals are all part of Sri Lanka’s cultural and religious beliefs. To witness them, experience their unique blend and see age-old rituals and traditions being brought alive again is a grand experience.

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