Tsagaan Sar

Tsagaan Sar, literally translated to "white moon," is also known as Mongolian Lunar New Year, the first day of the year for the Mongolian calendar. The days that Mongolians celebrate Tsagaan Sar each year vary because the celebration is based on the lunar cycle; this year they celebrated it Feb. 11th and 12th.

It is one of the most important and most expensive (for the younger peopole) Mongolian holidays. For two or three days, everything shuts down in the city and no one works so that they can visit friends and family, eat a TON of food and drink a TON of vodka (see pictures below), and exchange gifts. It not uncommon to spend over $1000. The younger Mongolians prepare food (cow chests,literally thousands of buuz [Matt's Mongolian teacher said she made 10,000 over the course of several weeks!], and various other delicacies), and give gifts to their guests and the people they visit (money is commonly given to the elders). Pictured below is the spread at Matt's coworker Bayarmaa's house, where we visited on the third day. We drank a lot (Rochelle passed up some of the vodka and so it was Matt's responsibility to drink it) and ate tons of buuz and bansh and lots of side dishes. The tower in the background is a bunch of baked pastries called uul boov or "sole cookies" because they look like feet. This was more for decoration during the holiday, but they eat it afterward (Bayarmaa brought lots of it to work).

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Tower o' cookies (uul boov)

Small dumplings (bansh), potato salad, carrots with vinegar

Cow chest (like 3 feet long!)

More bansh (buuz look similar but are larger). These are filled with greasy mutton. Matt loves these things!

Chinggis vodka. We think there are many brands here all with this name. We gave the one on the right to Bayarmaa and family (husband and adorable 3-year-old daughter-- who loves drinking vodka!! j/k) as a gift. It has a light stuck to the bottom that you can turn on with a button to make it glow! The vodka here is quite tasty. It also dominates -- the liquor isles at stores are like 95% vodka and 5% various imported liquor which is really expensive.

Matt, Rochelle, and Chinggis Khaan, hangin' out.

Here is wikipedia' description of the greeting rituals:

Many people will be dressed in full garment of national Mongol costumes. When greeting their elders during the White Moon festival, Mongols perform the zolgokh greeting, grasping them by their elbows to show support for them. The eldest receives greetings from each member of the family except for his/her spouse. During the greeting ceremony, family members hold long, typically blue, silk cloths called a khadag.

Matt's teacher taught him some formal greetings which he got to use to greet Bayarmaa's mother-in-law, and gave her a 5,000 tugrug bill (about $3.50). There is the basic greeting with the elbow grasping, and then apparently there are many other different sayings that can be exchanged, often snuff bottles are exchanged (that is popular in Mongolia). They like to do lots of them in the countryside but the city folk don't really have time for all of them so they just do a few of the most important. We didn't get to experience a lot of the more elaborate rituals this year. We saw lots of families out walking during these days in traditional clothing, called "deel" which is a long thick robe often very colorful with beautiful patterns. Lots of kids were wearing these too, so cute! Plenty of people wear these even during normal times, and they are pretty universal in the countryside, but in UB during Tsagaan Sar everyone is dressed up. Here's some people we saw while taking a stroll in the ger district:

~Matt