Festivals

Festivals

Timket (Epiphany)

Timket, or the Feast of the Epiphany, is celebrated in the January. The 3-day event commemorates the baptism of Christ and is one of the most colorful Ethiopian festivals.

The night before the Timket, priests take the Tabot (which symbolises the Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten Commandments) from each church to a tent at a consecrated pool or stream. There is frenetic activity, including the ringing of bells, blowing of trumpets and the burning of incense. In Addis Ababa, tents are pitched at Jan Meda, to the northeast of the city centre. At 02h00, mass is celebrated, attended by crowds of people carrying lighted oil lamps.At dawn, the priest uses a ceremonial cross to extinguish a candle burning on a pole in a nearby river. Inevitably, some of the congregation leap into the river. The Tabots are then taken back to the churches in procession, accompanied by horsemen, while the festivities continue.

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Meskel Celebration

Ethiopia is an old land of towering mountains and deserts and impossibly blue lakes strewn across the grassy highlands like scattered jewels. Man’s first beginnings were in the arid lowlands of the Awash

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Ethiopian Christmas and Easter

Ledet (Christmas) falls on December 29 Ethiopian calendar (January 7 Gregorian calendar). Ledet (Christmas) is celebrated after 43 days fasting known as Tsome Gahad (Advent), with a spectacular procession,

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