A Big Birthday Celebration
Maeve Wilson was in fourth grade the first time she went to the Lotus Lantern Festival in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The festival celebrates the birthday of Buddha, the founder of the Buddhist religion. Twelve years later, in 2013, Maeve was studying in university, but she could clearly remember how beautiful the celebration was the first time she went. “All the people in the city parade through the traditional area of Seoul, called Insadong, where there are many temples,” she remembered. People walk from temple to temple to see the different decorations and lanterns. The lit lanterns are a sign of respect to Buddha. Almost half the population of South Korea is Buddhist, so the festival is very popular in the country. The parade floats are built to look like lotus flowers or traditional Buddhist figures. “Some of the floats are even completely made of lotus flowers,” said Maeve. The festival is celebrated around May 16th every year and invites visitors from all over the world. The first time Maeve attended the celebration, she went with her father. They held hands as they pushed through the large crowd to a main stage, where monks played traditional Buddhist music. Maeve said that it was mostly just drumming on gongs, and everyone was dancing and singing. Onstage, people tossed lotus flowers and mints shaped like miniature elephant tusks into the big audience. While she and her father stood there, listening to the A Big Birthday Celebration © 2015 ReadWorks® , Inc. All rights reserved. traditional Korean music, a monk next to them tapped the arm of Maeve’s father. “Would your daughter like to go on my shoulders to see more?” the monk asked him. Maeve nodded in excitement, and up she soared into the air to see the stage. She saw several monks in both gray and orange robes on the stage. They played their drums and sang Buddhist prayers. As Maeve grew older, she tried to go to the Lantern Festival every year. “I always just wanted to see the lanterns,” she said. “Some looked like flowers, with petals hanging off the lamps. Those were smaller. Others were big, and hand-painted.” Even when she went to boarding school in Ireland and attended university in New York, she tried to travel to South Korea in May to see the lanterns in honor of Buddha’s birthday.