Galungan Day

GALUNGAN DAY

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Galungan Festival, Galungan Ceremony, Galungan and Kuningan Day, Happy Galungan And Kuningan

Praying in The Temple

Galungan is the most important holiday for Balinese Hindus, a celebration to honour the creator of the universe (Ida Sang Hyang Widi) and the spirits of the honoured ancestors.

The festival symbolizes the victory of good (Dharma) over evil (Adharma), and encourages the Balinese to show their gratitude to the creator and sainted ancestors.

Offerings to the Ancestors

Galungan occurs once in the 210-day cycle of the Balinese calendar, and marks the time of the year when the spirits of the ancestors are believed to visit the earth. Balinese Hindus perform rituals that are meant to welcome and entertain these returning spirits.

The house compounds that make up the heart of Balinese society come alive with devotions offered by the families living within. Families offer plentiful sacrifices of food and flowers to the ancestral spirits, expressing gratitude and hopes for protection. These sacrifices are also offered at local temples, which are packed with devotees bringing their offerings.

The whole island sprouts tall bamboo poles called "penjor" - these are usually decorated with fruit, young coconut leaves, and flowers, and set up on the right of every residence entrance. At each gate, you'll also find small bamboo altars set up especially for the holiday, each one bearing woven palm-leaf offerings for the spirits.

From a visitor’s point of view, Galungan is second only for sheer spectacle to the Nyepi “Day of Silence”. Kuningan is the final day of the festival, which brings proceedings to a close. It is all a much regimented occasion where every member of the household has specific tasks to perform and dressed in their “Sunday best” finery. The preceding days are all full of feverish activity – cooking, cleaning and making offerings. You’ll see the roads filled with convoys of scooters ferrying neatly dressed worshippers to and from temples carrying huge baskets of fruit, flowers or even live chickens.

The day before Galungan, men of the village head out at dawn in search of an unsuspecting pig, which is to become the temple sacrifice. The meat is used to make traditional spicy “lawar” dishes containing satay, jackfruit, dozens of herbs and spices and always enough to feed a small army.

Only if you go native staying in a rural village or in a small family home stay do you see all the complicated preparations and excited activity taking place behind the scene, although even in busy resorts such as Kuta, it’s virtually impossible to escape Kuningan fever.

There are roadblocks erected outside main temples as waves of devotees flood the area, bringing even more maddening traffic chaos than usual. Many restaurants and shops close for a few days but this is not on the scale of Nyepi (when Bali becomes a ghost town). There is still no shortage of places to get a cold beer or two and a bite to eat.

On Galungan day itself (always the Wednesday) it’s a time for families; your favourite bartender or the girl who cleans your hotel room each morning will have headed off home to the ancestral village at dawn to spend time with the folks. After a full day of prayers, a few petty family quarrels and non stop eating, it’s back to relative normality with perhaps a family stroll into the paddy fields for a picnic. Villages throughout the island celebrate the post-Galungan period in their own peculiar way.

The streets of Ubud are flooded with schoolchildren performing “Barong” dances with great enthusiasm while further east in Klungkung, a number of villages indulge in frenzied “Jempana” war games complete with long bamboo sticks to the sound of relentless drumming. There is also the bizarre ritual of a village elder seemingly “stabbing” himself with a ceremonial dagger while in a trance-like state. Curious onlookers are always welcome at these occasions and in small off-the-beaten-path villages you are likely to become the centre of attention, especially with the throng of giggling children.

Galungan and kuningan Day
Going To The Temple	Penjor	Barong Ngelawang