My name is Tin Win. We came from a refugee camp and in our country we were called Karen people. There was not much peace in our country and we had to run to Mae La Camp. Now that we are here in America, we also have culture and celebrations. Back in the day, our ancestor’s culture Tha Lei (The first month of Karen’s Calendar), said that they need to gather Karen children together once a year. Since Karen people live in  different part of the world, whether it was south side or other countries, they would gather those people together once a year. I will tell you the reasons why our parents back in the day celebrated New Year and the things I saw them doing like, put up a very long bamboo tree and on the tip of the bamboo they would put rice there. The reason the rice was up there, was because when they began planting the rice they only started with 7. After they planted that 7 rice, they would take a rest the next day and later the next day they would plant something else. What I heard back then was that the bamboo they were using was called (Toe Bee GAh Boe) and they would continue that tradition once a year. When it had to do with the grain of rice, they would leave 7 of them and cut the rest. They would not let the cows eat those 7 plants of rice and later those 7 plants they would hang on the tip of the bamboo. Those rice they would grind it and mixed it with sesame seeds and salt. It would  be called (rice cake and sticky rice cake) and they would give a blessing to the plants that they planted and would gather their children to come around. This is the Karen culture and also showed the beautiful Karen dances. When they started doing it they were saying that we should gather all of our children and bless the rice they planted. This is the Karen’s culture, and the reason was that our children would not spread out, but stick together. That was why people gather around to celebrate New Years, so that the next generation will see why they celebrated and how did they did it. Also they will remember and continue to keep doing that tradition.