Today’s got it all: a full moon, a lunar eclipse, and probably the oldest party in the world.

The custom is so ancient that no one is exactly sure how it all got started. But it wasn’t always fun and games. One popular tale is that long ago in India, there was a boy named Prahalad. He was a devotee of the god Vishnu. Prahalad’s father, an evil king, had grown exceedingly arrogant and jealous of Vishnu’s power. He ordered Prahalad to renounce Vishnu but Prahalad refused. Incensed, the king ordered his sister, a fire demon named Holika, to sit on a pyre holding Prahalad, so that he would be consumed. Miraculously, Vishnu’s power protected him, and Holika burned instead. To this day, Hindus celebrate this moment when good was preserved and evil burned away.

Some centuries later, Vishnu was manifested as Krishna, in the northern city of Dwarka. Krishna was a mischievous young prankster. One day, he thought it would be fun to drench the local girls with water and, to infuriate them, he added bright colors that would stain their clothing. They were none too pleased, so of course they retaliated. Krishna recruited all the young boys to join him. Adults got caught in the cross-fire. Soon the entire village, from the wealthiest nobles to the most downtrodden untouchables, joined the fray and launched the spray. The village was stained a joyous, raucous rainbow of pinks, yellows, purples and reds. In the end, everybody had such a good time, they resolved to do it again the following spring…

…and so today India explodes in a massive, joyous, technicolor, communal water-balloon fight known as “Holi.” It’s the annual festival of spring. Holi celebrates the destruction of evil and the coming of colorful days ahead. Folks gather Indians in plain, absorbent white cotton – with no distinction of class, clan, or gender – and splatter a rainbow across the sub-continent. 

And then the party spills across the globe, to everywhere the Hindu diaspora has taken the faithful: Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa. Even to the United States, where there is a particularly large and notorious Holi celebration each year at Stanford University. (Yes, for one day the Cardinal will be rainbow-colored.)

Here in the Northeast there’s no sign of spring and a full-moon night left us all a little sleepless. But the world is waking up, there are colorful days ahead. So go ahead and dig that Grateful Dead t-shirt out of the closet and join in.

It’s time to paint the town pink.