KATHMANDU: The government has granted holiday for Thursday in five eastern districts.

Issuing a notice on Wednesday, the Ministry of Home Affairs has announced that Jhapa, Morang, Sunsari, Siraha and Saptari are granted public holiday to mark the Siruwa-Pawani festival on Thursday.

New Year’s Day is a public holiday across the country.

The Siruwa festival is held to mark the start of New Year and is observed with the worship of the cooking stove and cleaning up the streets and maintaining environmental hygiene.

The specialty of the festival is the worship of the cooking stove and daubing the kitchen floor. In the festival widely celebrated by the Maithili community it is believed that kitchen should also be given rest for at least one night. So the foods are cooked in the day and eaten in the evening.

The household gods are also worshipped and presented with food cooked a day before along with curd and sugar. The revelers also clean up the streets, wells and water the trees so as to keep them hydrated during the dry month.

The festival is marked by Maithili, Tharu, Rajbanshi and Satar communities as per their own respective traditions. Other communities apart from Maithili also eat meat on the occasion.

(With inputs from RSS)