Celebrating A New Year [in San Bernardino, California, USA]

Several thousand people were expected to celebrate the Cambodian new year Saturday at a festival at the Temple of the Khmer Buddhist Society in San Bernardino. The event, cosponsored by San Bernardino's Asian-American Resource Center, included traditional Cambodian dances and music, homemade Cambodian and Thai food and a singing contest. Traditional Cambodian new year festivities take place April 13-15, which in Cambodia is a national holiday. But because most people in the United States work on at least some of those days, Buddhist temples here typically celebrate on the weekend before or after the actual new year.