7 October 2025 – Chin communities worldwide, including those in Myanmar, are celebrating the New Year in October, organized despite the absence of a fixed date for the celebration.
Last week, the Chin Christian Fellowship in Macau, an autonomous region on the south coast of China, celebrated the New Year by organizing a football tournament for both men and women. The event was also joined by other ethnic groups from Myanmar including Karen, Karenni, Arakan, and Burmese, according to Zalen.
In Aizawl, the Zanniat Christian Church organized the celebration entitled ‘Dawngpui’ on 2 October 2025, with a printed vinyl motto reading “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations’. Similarly, the traditional celebration was organized by the Zanniat Community of South Australian on 5 October, in Malaysia on 2 October, and in Battle Creek in the US on 4 October.
The festival, which is now mostly known and accepted as Chin New Year, has its traditional origin in association with cultivation in the olden times. It is a celebration in Chin culture when the Chin farmers and their families come home at the end of the harvest season after staying on the farm for months.
The festival, which is now known globally as Chin New Year, has its celebration called by various names in Chin dialects of different areas such as Khuado in Tedim and Tonzang, Fang-er in Falam, K’Thai Ei in Mindat and Kanpetlet, On Hu Saung Thar Ei Pwe in Asho, Taai Cha Nai in Paletwa, Cang Zom in Matupi, Khai Mdeh in Dai (Daai), Tho in Hakha and Kut or Pawl Kut in Mizo (mostly celebrated in December or March).
To read more about the celebrations in the past:
- In a statement released on 31 October 2009 in Rangoon, Chin Social Welfare Association said: “This harvest festival is the most pleasant and prominent of Chin traditional celebrations. The essence of the festival remains the same even though it has various names in different dialects. It has become the only highly regarded traditional festival that makes the national spirit of the Chin people united.”
- “Traditionally, the festival can be said of having three purposes. It speaks about the concept of sanctification of the village which was thought to have been occupied by evil spirits while the Chin farmers spent months harvesting on their farms. It also speaks about the concept of remembering the dead and that of New Year or Thanksgiving at the end of the harvest season,” John Mung, President of Zomi Innkuan UK, told Chinland Guardian on 28 October 2008.
- In a 2011 interview with President of Chin Community USA, Pu Fung Dun about the celebration, its historical facts, dates and importance.
- To read more celebration events in the past, click the link here: Chin New Year celebrations
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