Maras Taun is a thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...

 festival

Festival

A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....

 and harvest festival

Harvest festival

A Harvest Festival is an annual celebration which occurs around the time of the main harvest of a given region. Given the differences in climate and crops around the world, harvest festivals can be found at various times throughout the world...

 celebrated by Malays in Belitung Island

Belitung

Belitung, , is an island on the east coast of Sumatra, Indonesia in the Java Sea. The island is known for its pepper and for its tin. It was in the possession of the British from 1812 until the British ceded control of the island to the Dutch in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824...

 and its surrounding smaller islands.

Maras in Malay Belitung dialect means "cutting" and taun means "year." Maras Taun occurs once a year after the harvest of rice from dry-field paddy field

Paddy field

A paddy field is a flooded parcel of arable land used for growing rice and other semiaquatic crops. Paddy fields are a typical feature of rice farming in east, south and southeast Asia. Paddies can be built into steep hillsides as terraces and adjacent to depressed or steeply sloped features such...

s (padi ladang or Oryza montana).

Maras Taun in Mendanau

For the Mendanau islanders, rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

 is the main foodstuff. Rice trading connects people from island to island. The festival is celebrated by fishermen in addition to farmers. The farmers celebrate their harvest; the fishermen celebrate their successful fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 hauling.

Rites

The festival is opened with a farmer dance. They sing a Maras Taun song together to accompany the dance. After the dance ends, a village chief (a Muslim leader) appears and leads the people in prayer. The chief burns a piece of agarwood

Agarwood

Agarwood or oodh is a dark resinous heartwood that forms in Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees when they become infected with a type of mold...

 which causes a fragrant smell; then, he says the prayers and blesses two pieces of sacred leaves called daun hati-hati or daun kesalan, a variety of medicinal mint also known as Asian oregano

Plectranthus amboinicus

Plectranthus amboinicus is a tender fleshy perennial plant in the family Lamiaceae with an oregano-like flavor and odor, native to Southern and Eastern Africa, but widely cultivated and naturalised in the Old and New World Tropics...

. Afterward, the sacred leaves are given to the people. The islanders spread the leaves around their homes and boats because they believe that the sacred leaves bring luck.

Lepat

Before the harvest festival, people gather pounded rice that will be cooked as lepat. Lepat is a variety of steamed cake

Cake

Cake is a form of bread or bread-like food. In its modern forms, it is typically a sweet and enriched baked dessert. In its oldest forms, cakes were normally fried breads or cheesecakes, and normally had a disk shape...

 made from red rice

Red rice

Red rice may refer to:*Red rice, also known as weedy rice, a low-yielding rice variety that persists as a weed in fields of better-quality rice* Thai Red Cargo rice, a non-glutinous long grain rice variety...

, which is filled with a piece of fish or meat and wrapped with young coconut leaves. Hundreds of lepats will be distributed to the villagers at the end of the festival.