I know fairly little about Diwali other than what I’ve read in the newspapers and on Wikipedia, but I know it’s important to a lot of my neighbors in and around Fremont. I guess asking “Why are there Christmas lights up so early?” is a kind of ritual for clueless people who move into Fremont from other parts of the world or other parts of the US that don’t have a large South Asian population. :) I’ve answered this question many times myself since finding out about Diwali… But as it’s getting darker earlier and earlier and we’ve already had our first “Bay Area winter” storm, it’s not surprising at all that there is a “festival of lights”-type of holiday going on.

When I was looking up Diwali to see if there were any relevant videos, I saw the president’s video and assumed it wouldn’t be at all relevant, because politicians’ sound-bites about holidays they don’t observe are usually terribly generic. But this is actually specific to the holiday.

How did he do? (Not politically, I mean in terms of discussing Diwali!)

As this is a lunar holiday like Chinese New Year (and Easter, really), next year’s Diwali will fall on November 5. If you plan ahead, there are usually dances and other festivities that you may be able to attend.

diwali by Raven3k

Finally, glowing images of Diwali 2009 from around the world, posted to the Flickr blog just as I was about to publish this post. Maybe you can find our area in there later tonight or tomorrow morning!