Hill Tribe New Year’s Festival.
This is the most enjoyable time of the hill tribe after their painstaking work all the year round. They dress themselves with their new colorful dresses and celebrate their wonderful parties with full drinking and eating. Each tribe of them has different schedule of celebrating their new year’s festival as follow:

Karen.
The Karen will celebrate their new year just before the growing rice time; it is generally about February of each year.  The right time of celebrating the New Year’s Day will be selected by a village witch-doctor.  When the time arrives the witch-doctor will begin the ceremony by binding every villager’s wrist with holy thread.  After that the head of each family will bring their own boiling and distilling spirit to give to the witch-doctor.  The first glass of the spirit will be kept for an offering to the guardian spirit of the forest that be invited by the witch-doctor to join the ceremony for protecting all the villagers in the village and helping the growth of crops.
Later everybody joins drinking together.  When finishes the ceremony at home the witch-doctor has to do the same thing to all the houses in the village. On the New Year’s Day they will kill lots of buffaloes and pigs to celebrate the New Year among them.

Lahu.
The Lahu prefer to celebrate the New Year’s day between March-April, the celebration of the Lahu will last for 4-5 days. It is divided to female’s New Year and male’s New Year.  On the first day there will be the ceremony to warship the ancestors, on the second day every family will give the typical dessert that makes with steam sticky rice mixes with sesame, to every house in the village. Then it is the time to celebrate the New Year’s day, there will be dancing, throwing with fun the sub-agent. On the later days they will go to visit the other villages by bringing the typical dessert which made by their own, and pork to give to the head of each village. The day ends with enjoying together with drinking and dancing.

Lisu.
The New Year’s day of Lisu is called “ Gin Waw” it will be held exactly the same day of Chinese New Year.  During the end of the year the Lisu will prepare their New Year by boiling and distilling corn spirit, their typical dessert, and preparing to kill the pigs for using in the ceremony, and they will cook some food to celebrate the New Year among them.  In that evening most of men in each family will decorate the New Year’s tree by bringing the branch of the tree stick in the area in front of the house, then take a pack of dessert and pork tie them on the tree.  During the early evening every family will go to gather at the witch-doctor’s house in the village. There will be a person haunted by a spirit and be asked to protect, and also to wipe out all the evil.  At night time all the young who will dress themselves with their beautiful typical dresses come to join dancing which called “ Jakue”  around the New Year’s tree of every house in the village.  In the morning of the New Year’s day there will be shooting to welcome the coming New Year.  During the morning the men will bring all offerings to make an offering to the village spirit house, then continue having celebration and dancing until late at night.

Hmong.
The Hmong’s New Year will generally begin in December after the harvest season. On the first day they will kill the pigs for making the offering to their ancestors and the household spirit, later that they will go to visit their cousins and having a party among them for few days. In this period of time there will, also, be one of amazing ceremony which concerns about calling the morale of crops to come and join the celebration at their houses.