शुभ तिहार! If Dashain is the big homecoming festival, Tihar is the beautiful one. Five days, each with its own meaning, its own rituals — and, in our house, its own special brand of chaos. This year Tihar runs **November 7–11** — Kaag Tihar on the 7th through Bhai Tika on the 11th — and here's how we do all five days in North Carolina, imperfectly but with a lot of love.
## Day 1 — Kaag Tihar (काग तिहार): feeding the crows
The festival opens by honoring the crow, the messenger. Back home, you'd put out food for the crows in the morning. Here? We put some rice and fruit on the back deck railing before the kids wake up, and then we all watch from the window — the kids pressed against the glass yelling "kag aayo!" — like it's a nature documentary.
The kids have named "our" crow. (It's a different crow every year. Don't tell them.) It takes five minutes, it costs nothing, and it's a lovely little reminder that the festival has started. Small rituals count.
## Day 2 — Kukur Tihar (कुकुर तिहार): the best day of the year, according to my kids
This is the easiest sell in the entire Nepali calendar. You get to put a sayapatri (सयपत्री) garland on a dog and give it the good treats. Try telling a 6-year-old that and watching her not lose her mind with joy.
We don't have a dog, so we borrow the occasion: our neighbor's very patient golden retriever gets the full treatment — garland, tika, premium treats. My daughter announces, very seriously, "kukur lai tika lagaune!" — and now considers this dog her personal responsibility for one day a year. Honestly the dog seems fine with the arrangement. If you have a dog, you have no excuse. If you don't, find a neighbor with one. Kukur Tihar is undefeated.
## Day 3 — Laxmi Puja (लक्ष्मी पूजा): lights in every window
This is the heart of Tihar for me. We clean the house top to bottom (the kids "help," which means it takes twice as long), then in the evening we light diyos (दियो) — those little oil lamps — and put them in every window and along the front steps. We don't have the traditional clay diyos, so ours are a mix of whatever we've collected over the years, plus tealights when we run short. Nobody's checking.
Then comes the part I love most: the house glows. You stand outside for a second and look at your little lit-up house in a Fuquay-Varina neighborhood where nobody else is celebrating, and it feels like you're holding a small warm secret. Laxmi Mata is supposed to visit clean, well-lit homes — "ujyalo ghar ma Laxmi aauchhin," as my mom always said. I like to think she'd approve of ours.
## Day 4 — Mha Puja (म्हः पूजा) and Govardhan Puja (गोवर्धन पूजा)
I'll be honest: this is the day we do the least with, and I feel a little guilty about it. Mha Puja — the Newar tradition of worshipping the self — is profound and beautiful and completely beyond my ability to do properly in a suburban living room. We keep it simple: a small offering, a moment of quiet, and I tell the kids, in the simplest words I can find, that today is about respecting yourself and the people who make you who you are. Aafulai maya garne din.
One day, when they're older, I'll take them home and let them see it done properly. For now, the seed is planted. That's enough.
## Day 5 — Bhai Tika (भाइटीका): the main event, over video call
Bhai Tika is the emotional peak — sisters putting the saptarangi tika (सप्तरंगी टीका) on their brothers' foreheads, brothers giving gifts and promises of protection in return. My sister is in Nepal. My kids' aunts are scattered. So we do what we do for Dashain too: video call, "tika lagaideu!" on both ends of a laggy screen, blessings read out loud.
My daughter takes her role as the sister very seriously — she made her brother sit still for a full two minutes last year, which might be a world record. My son mostly cared about the gift envelope. He's four. He's got his priorities straight.
After the calls, we eat. Sel roti (सेल रोटी) (still lopsided — I've accepted this about myself), anarsa (अनरसा) if I managed to make them without burning a batch, and whatever feast we've put together. And in the evening, we do our own tiny version of deusi-bhailo (देउसी-भैलो) — the traditional caroling groups that go door to door. Ours is just our family, singing too loud in our own living room, the kids banging on a borrowed madal (मादल) completely out of rhythm. The neighbors probably think we're strange. They're not wrong.
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Five days, five small rituals, none of them perfect. But here's what I've learned doing Tihar abroad: the festival doesn't need perfection. It needs the lights in the window, the garland on the dog, the tika — even over a screen. It needs you to show up for it.
How does your family do Tihar away from home? Aafno ghar ma kasto garnuhunchha? Tell me in the comments — I'm always looking for ideas to steal for next year.
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