Buddha’s Birthday: the birthday of the Prince Siddhartha Gautama, a spiritual teacher who is considered to be the founder of Buddhism. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha of our age, “Buddha” meaning “awakened one” or “the enlightened one.”
Beginning in 1873 and traditionally celebrated in Mahayana Buddhism, the holiday is celebrated in most Asian countries on the 8th day of the 4th month in the Chinese lunar calendar, and the day is an official holiday in Hong Kong, Macau, and South Korea. The date varies from year to year in the Gregorian calendar.
The actual date of the Buddha’s birth and death are uncertain: most early 20th-century historians dated his lifetime as 563 BCE to 483 BCE, but more recent opinion dates his death to between 486 and 483 BCE or, according to some, between 411 and 400 BCE.
