World Holiday Photo and Post Challenge

Following on from my alternative Vox hunt posts, I have set up a group called World Holiday Photo and Post Challenge, the purpose of which is to learn and post about different holidays that may be occurring in different parts of the world.  Please consider yourself invited to come and join if you haven't already.  The group is also kind of a reaction to the North America focus of so many of the Vox questions.  In the group description, I have also included a link to a calendar to see what holidays are coming up.  One that caught my attention this week was the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi.  I have long been interested in the story of Ganesh, the elephant headed boy.  This account of the story is from Wikipedia:

The Origin of the festival lies in the Holy Hindu scriptures which tell the story of Lord Ganesha. Lord Ganesha (or Ganapati) (the names mean "Lord [isha] or [pati] of Shiva's hosts [gana]") was created by goddess Parvati, consort of Lord Shiva.

According to the legend, Lord Shiva, the Hindu God of resolution, was away at a war. His wife Pavarti, wanted to bathe and having no-one to guard the door to her house, conceived of the idea of creating a son who could guard her. Parvati created Ganesha out of the sandalwood paste that she used for her bath and breathed life into the figure. She then set him to stand guard at her door and instructed him not to let anyone enter.

In the meantime, Lord Shiva returned from the battle but as Ganesha did not know him, stopped Shiva from entering Parvati's chamber. Shiva, enraged by Ganesh’s impudence, drew his trident and cut off Ganesha's head. Pavarti emerged to find Ganesha decapitated and flew into a rage. She took on the form of the Goddess Kali and threatened destruction to the three worlds of Heaven, Earth and the subterranean earth.

Seeing her in this mood, the other Gods were afraid and Shiva, in an attempt to pacify Parvati, sent out his ganas, or hordes, to bring the head of the first living being with his head towards the north (the auspicious direction associated with wisdom). The first living thing they came across was an elephant. So they brought the head of this elephant and Shiva placed it on the trunk of Parvati's son and breathed life into him. Parvati was overjoyed and embraced her son, the elephant-headed boy whom Shiva named Ganesha, the lord of his ganas.

These days:

Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is widely worshipped as the supreme god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune.

I have seen lots of representations of Ganesha in art or sculpture.  This one resides in the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta and provides a reminder of Java's Hindu past:

I don't know if the holiday of Ganesh Chartuti is still celebrated in any of the Hindu parts of Indonesia, such as the island of Bali. 

My yoga teacher, who is very interested in Hindu philosophy and beliefs, has a small statue of Ganesh in the room where we do our yoga, so expect she will have something to say about this holiday at this week's yoga class.