Lighting up butter lamps [Photo/China Tibet Online] 

Tibetans embrace the annual Butter Lamp Festival on Dec. 20, an increasing noted Tibetan festival for tourists from home and abroad, which offers a visual feast of butter lamps that everyone cannot miss.

Tibetan pilgrims celebrate the traditional festival by gathering together in majoy monasteries like the Jokhang Temple, prostrating in prayer and begging for good fortune.

With litten butter lamps, the entire Jokhang Temple is bathed in festivity, from the rich smell of butter to flickering lights.

The festival, which is held on the 25th day of the 10th month of the Tibetan calendar every year in commemoration of Tsong Khapa, the founder of the Geluk sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who pssed away on October 25 on the Tibetan calendar in the year of 1419.