The different tribes of Nagaland celebrate their distinct seasonal festivals with a pageantry of colour and a feast of music. All the tribes have their own festivals which they hold so dear. They regard their festivals sacrosanct and participation in celebration is compulsory.

Most of these festivals revolve round agriculture, it being the main-stay of Naga society. Over 85% population of Nagaland is directly dependent on agriculture and lives in a thousand and odd villages situated on high hill tops or slopes overlooking green valleys humming with murmuring streams. In this blissful setting Nagas enjoy the blessing of Nature with rare gusto. In most of the places agriculture consists of mono crop.

Although some religious and spiritual sentiments are inter woven into secular rites and rituals, the predominant theme of the festivals is offering of prayers to a Supreme Being having different names in different Naga dialects. At these festivals, the spirit of Gods are propitiated with sacrifices by the Village Shaman for a bountiful harvest either before the sowing or on the eve of harvest.

One of the well-known festival is the Sekrenyi Festival of the Angami Naga tribe .

The Angamis celebrate Sekrenyi in the month of February. It normally falls on the 25th day of the Angami month of "KEZEI" (in the month of February). The ten-day festival is also called Phousanyi by the Angamis.

The festival follows a circle of ritual and ceremony, the first being Kizie. A few drops of rice water taken from the top of the jug, called Zumho are put in to leaves and placed at the three main posts of the house by the lady of the household. The first day begins with all young and old going to the village well to bathe.

In the night, two young men will go to the well to clean it. Some of the village youth guard the well in the night as no one is allowed to fetch water after cleaning the well. The womenfolk, especially, are not allowed to touch the well water. Hence they have to see that water is fetched for the household before the well cleaning. Early the next morning, all the young men of the village rise to wash themselves at the well. The whole process is carried out in a ritualistic manner. The young men will don two new shawls (the white Mhoushü and the black Lohe) and sprinkle water on their breast, knees and on their right arm. This ceremony is called Dzuseva (touching the sleeping water) and it assures them that all their ills and misfortunes have been washed away by the purified well-water.

On their return from the well, a cock is sacrificed by throttling it with the bare hands. It is taken as a good omen when the right leg falls over the left leg as the cock falls down. The innards of the fowl are taken out hung outside the house for the Village elders to come and inspect it. Beginning from the fourth day of the festival, a three-day session of singing and feasting starts.

The Thekra Hie is the best part of the festival where the young people of the village sit together and sing traditional songs throughout the day. Jugs of rice-beer and plates of meat are placed before the participants. On the seventh day the young men go for hunting. The most important ceremony falls on the eighth day when the bridge-pulling or gate-pulling is performed or inter-village visits are exchanged. Until the close of the festival no one goes to the fields and all field work ceases during this season of feasting and song.

The young unmarried girls with closely shaven heads sit down with the bronzed youth sing tunes bygone ages, recreating a past where no care touched the human soul.