Tsagaan Sar–The Greatest Holiday Ever

As I prepare to write this entry, I’m trying to think of ways to include an explanation of my post-party-tipsy state into a disclaimer about the quality of the post. No need now, I suppose. Just get ready for the coolest entry ever…because this one’s about the coolest holiday in Mongolia: Tsagaan Sar.

Tsagaan Sar means “White Month,” or alternatively, “White Moon.” Considering the fact that it is marked by the first new moon (i.e. black sky) of the lunar calendar, however, it is usually translated as the former (or erroneously as the latter). And though this entry is an attempt to portray Tsagaan Sar from the perspective of my own experiences, I should probably say a few things about the holiday in general beforehand.

It is an intensely family-oriented holiday, and for this reason I must admit that I was a little nervous to celebrate it here in Mongolia for the first time. During the first three days of Tsagaan Sar, families dress up in traditional Mongolian clothing (hereafter referred to as ‘deel’ ) and visit each others’ homes, where they are met with gifts, refreshments, and the traditional holiday staple that is buuz–steamed goat meat dumplings. Guests are also expected to bring gifts of money, sweets, or small practical items when they visit homes. A whole series of behavioral protocols, which will be visited in a later section, are also observed during this holiday. The most important thing to take away from this introduction, though, is the fact that Tsagaan Sar is–by far–the most important and widely (read: wildly) celebrated holiday in Mongolian culture.

Families are expected to spend up to 3 months’ salary in preparing for Tsagaan Sar. This money is put to use towards buying the materials necessary for the hand-production of up to 2,000 dumplings, dozens of traditional lard-fried sweet bread products, candy, and (of course) vodka. Cold weather in the weeks leading up to Tsagaan Sar offers Mongolians the perfect opportunity to produce these items and freeze them outside, but increases in average temperatures have made this difficult in recent years.

So, to move onto my own experience, the first celebrated portion of Tsagaan Sar is actually Tsagaan Sar Eve–or Bituun. Foreign residents of Mongolia are  cautioned that this has the potential to be the most painful of the celebration days, as it tends to inspire parties limited to nuclear families. I was fortunate enough, however, to experience Bituun with my best friend Uugana and her family; she is my main counterpart, and our relationship is one that routinely bridges the inconsistencies between American and Mongolian cultural trends. She was happy to share this auspicious day with me–a foreigner external to her personal and familial adherence to tradition–and I was very grateful. Bituun does not feature any of the customary motions or greetings of the rest of this complex holiday; on Bituun, families simply eat together and finish preparations for the actual celebrations, which occur the following day.

Uugana’s son Yusoo played video games and enthusiastically showed me his Playstation car-racing simulator prowess while Uugana’s husband Saikhnaa put the finishing touches on the Urz centerpiece–a decorative skinned goat-hindquarters placed on an ornate wooden tray in the center of a low table in the living room. Saikhnaa and his young brother-in-law, Uka, used an antique Mongolian steak knife to remove and snack on portions of the slab of meat.

Saikhnaa and Uka slice away at the urz

Another family's urz display with side dishes

I came to this Bituun celebration with the assumption that gifts were requisite for participation, but I was wrong. That I was included in this very laid-back celebration of the opening of Tsagaan Sar was a true honor and a testament to my friendships with Uugana and her family.

Interestingly, the word ‘bituun’ is actually a verbal noun of a term that means “to eat until completely full”, or “to eat until unable to eat any more.” Bituun certainly lives up to its name; I was served buuz, carrot salad, and milk tea until I was ready to explode.

buuz

As I said before, I felt extremely lucky to be invited to Bituun at Uugana’s house. It was perfectly within her culture-dictated rights to spend Bituun with only the members of her immediate family, and she still chose to include me. My anxieties surrounding the hardships of a family-less Tsagaan Sar, however, were realized on the second day–the designated extended family day.

I was slated to host 11 of my counterparts at some point during the holiday at my apartment. I was told to prepare pizza, vodka, and candy for all 11 of them–”but no gifts, because of the global recession,” according to my manager–but the event was canceled at the last minute when half of my coworkers traveled to the countryside to visit relatives. I was left friendless, essentially, for the bulk of this most social of holidays…or so I thought.

I had believed that my dearth of home-invitations stemmed from a previously unnoticed lack of community-integration, and as a volunteer, I can tell you that this is the worst feeling someone can have. That it fell on a joyous holiday made it that much more unbearable. Soon enough, however, I realized that the first official day of Tsagaan Sar was for relatives, and that ANY invitations as a foreigner were to be much appreciated. I ended up going to the home of Baagi and Byamba–a former Mongolian Denver resident-cum-Arvaikheer Merci Corps employee, and a head monk (lam) at a beautiful monastery in town, respectively. This husband-and-wife team is considered to be among the most affluent in the town, and their spiritual and logistic contributions to the community are widely celebrated. I felt so honored to have been invited to their Tsagaan Sar party with my American friends.

Baagi (purple shirt) and Byamba in their apartment. Byamba owns his own monastery and stupa, and his father is the founder of one of the city's most prominent construction businesses. He is a Red Monk, which means he is allowed to marry and have children. Red Monks tend to focus on community projects, while Yellow Monks are required to engage in introspective prayer and the private (celibate) achievement of enlightenment.

This was my first Tsagaan Sar visit outside of Uugana’s family. In these visits, which begin after Bituun, guests are required to hold blue bolts of traditional fabric called ‘hadag’ in their outstretched, upturned hands. If the guest is older than the host, he or she must hold the hadag thusly above the arms of the host, who also holds a hadag in the same fashion. If the guest is younger, his or her arms must be held beneath those of the host. The younger of the pair is expected to lean in for the elder to place a Mongolian kiss (which may be a strong, brief sniff through the nose) on each of his or her cheeks. During this greeting, both parties say the phrase, “Amar Baina uu,” “Amar Sain uu,” or a combination of the two. This translates roughly to “Are you resting well?” and its use is strictly limited to greetings during Tsagaan Sar. Every person in the household must be greeted accordingly, and then everyone may fold their hadag and place them in their deel pockets before offering small gifts to the eldest member of the household and sitting down in the main living room for refreshments.

The aforementioned urz platter remains the centerpiece of the table for the duration of Tsagaan Sar, and next to it is a stack of lard-fried bread bricks called heveenbov. They are arranged in a circle in one, three, five, seven, or nine layers, depending on the age and/or rank of the host. These ornate bread bricks are often topped with candy and sweetened white dairy products to symbolize the purity of the White Month. Young couples typically stick to 3-layered heveenbov stacks, while the elderly display larger arrangements. The heevenbov structure contains, without exception, an odd number of layers. This is due to the fact that the bottom layer represents happiness, the next layer sorrow, the next happiness, and so forth. To show an even-number-layered heveenbov is to suggest that sadness permeates life, and it is never done.

Heveenbov. This model may appear to have six layers, but the top disc is merely a cover for the otherwise topless arrangement and is meant to support candy and sweetened dairy products.

During Tsagaan Sar, the heevenbov serves a solely decorative purpose. Separate glass trays of candy, as well as plates containing sausages and cucumbers, are passed around the room clockwise for guests to consume. Shots of expensive liquors, bowls of fermented horse milk (airag), and glasses of homemade Russian beer (brashk) also move around the room, and recipients are expected to either drink the entire offering or to touch it to their lips before returning the container directly to the host. Depending on the household, the passing of liquor can be a gendered endeavor, with red wine offered to women and vodka to men.

One of the more interesting customs is the exchange of snuff between guests. Men often carry ornate glass or agate bottles of powdered tobacco in embroidered silk pouches on Tsagaan Sar, and it is customary to swap bottles during household visits. One man will remove the bottle from his pouch and hold it out in his right hand (with his left arm bent under his right elbow–the default respectful passing gesture of Mongolia), and the recipient will simultaneously accept the snuff bottle with his right hand while sliding his own bottle into the other man’s. Each will then remove a small amount of snuff from the bottle using the spoon attached to the inside of the lid and deposit it on the skin between his index finger and thumb, inhale it deeply into each nostril, close the bottle, sniff the lid, and return it to its original owner the same way it was passed.

As with any major Mongolian social event, toasting and singing tend to be a large part of Tsagaan Sar home-visits. Toasting, of course, serves as a spoken reminder of interpersonal appreciation and friendly affirmation for guests and hosts alike, and it often sets the tone for drunken merriment. Sometimes, though, the hosts–who usually remain comparatively sober on Tsagaan Sar and opt to get their guests drunk–decide to do the singing (especially when they have the added confidence of affluence and marital happiness, à la Baagi and Byamba!)

Guests normally visit individual homes for 1-2 hours before leaving. In my limited experience, the hosts’ presentation of gifts for the guests is typically an unspoken signal for their departure. The gifts I have received, incidentally, have so far been way beyond my own financial means–be they foreign sweets, expensive personal hygiene products, phone unit cards, or crisp (and lifesaving) bills.

Before I go into a soc/anth rant about the collectivist- wealth-redistribution benefits of such a holiday, here’s a play-by-play of my first Tsagaan Sar so far:

After visiting Baagi’s and Byamba’s place, I went home and lamented the fact that I did not have more houses to visit. My other American friends all seemed to be involved in parties at their respective coworkers’ homes, but everyone from my entire work realm seemed to have gone away for the holiday. As mentioned earlier, I was beginning to feel as if my loneliness was a reflection of poor cultural integration skills–but then I remembered that a mere expression of my interest in Mongolian  cultural processes has always landed me exactly where I wanted to be socially. So I sent “Happy Tsagaan Sar” text messages out to almost everyone I knew in town, and sure enough, I started getting invitations. The following two days turned out to be filled with enriching cultural and interpersonal experiences.

Yesterday, I visited the home of my coworker’s sister, whom I had never met. I arrived before my other friends, so the vodka poured for me before anyone else had to touch it. I was alone with a couch full of complete strangers, whom I thought were staying, but they ended up leaving after we had all carried out the customary hadag greeting protocol. I ended up having a lengthy discussion with my coworker’s brother-in-law while stuffing myself with buuz, vodka, brandy, whiskey, Irish cream liqueur, airag, brashk, milk tea, and salad. Eventually my other friends arrived, and we had a very jolly gift exchange and conversation period.

My coworker's sister's family and friends

After visitng my coworker’s sister’s home, I returned to Uuganas house for an official Tsagaan Sar party with my American friends. She had even prepared vegetarian food options–something that is very scarce here in Mongolia–for one of my sitemates, who is abstaining from meat during Lent. I was told that this party would phase out into a jaunt across the street to my director’s home–the home of Uugana’s father-in-law–but it never happened.  I returned home slightly tipsy and got into my pajamas just in time to receive a text message from a tenuous acquaintance that read “REPLY ME–MY HUSBAND WILL COME TO PICK YOU UP. WHERE DO YOU LIVE?”

I sensed that I might be in for a rare opportunity to get to know an entire whole kinship group to which I had never been exposed. At such a late hour–midnight, actually–I felt like it was even more of a social adventure. So I rushed back into my traditional clothes and ran out the door to meet the text-sender’s husband in a landcruiser. We drove to an apartment complex near my campus and ascended eight flights of stairs to the apartment of Duya–a Japanese language teacher at the magnet elementary school where I help coordinate a computer-based educational resource program. Once again, vodka, buuz, salad, airag, milk tea, and conversation with new friends.

It got very late, and I had the impression that it was time for me to leave. Duya and her husband told me that, despite my apartment’s close proximity to their complex, I would have to accept a ride home in their vehicle. I explained that I am more than accustomed to walking alone at night, especially from such insignificant distances, but they insisted. So I followed them down the stairs to the parking lot, where a white van filled with happy women and children pulled up. We got in and, thinking I was going straight home, I set my body at an uncomfortable angle on the edge of the seat by the frozen sliding door.

We drove through the darkness of Arvaikheer for over an hour–into nameless alleys and down steep dirt bluffs, through dry riverbeds to hidden houses, all the while dropping laughing girls off at points throughout the town. I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone would know this labyrinth of homes and dusty streets so well, and my tispy brain was working overtime in suppressing what the night’s vodka had turned into a very urgent bladder. I found out then that Duya was not taking me home; she was bringing me to her father’s house, where there was supposedly a car waiting to escort me back to the area that was originally within eyeshot of where I was before.

So, my decision to use a faint social connection to meet some new people led me to a whole household of people I had never even seen before. Her father’s house rested on a hill above the city in a dark corner on the far northwest side, and it was filled with people. There was more meat, more vodka, more tea, and by then I was barely able to walk from a combination of drink and sensory overload. Still, though, I made some new friends and received some very interesting gifts; Duya’s mother handed me a bar of chocolate and a half-used orb of yellow anti-bacterial liquid soap on our way out.

I remember walking out of the house into the man’s yard and looking out over the city. The lights of the gers and houses and apartments were far enough away for the Milky Way to be the brightest light in my field of vision, and the holiday had rendered the entire town silent. It was really an amazing site, and a truly incredible feeling; I felt like I had really done the right thing as Duya and her husband guided me into her father’s car and drove me home.

Today I dragged myself out of bed and went to a giant hadag-greeting at my school at 9 am with faculty and staff. It lasted until 10 am, at which time everyone shot out the door to their respective social obligations. I then joined my friend Brian at the ger of a mutual student, Zaya, on the northwest end of town for an afternoon Tsagaan Sar visit. She lives with her mother in a gorgeously decorated and very warm ger, and she had infused all of the buuz she made with chili powder. Spice, for those of you who  have not heard, is simply not done here. So I was very happy.

When we first entered her home, she instructed us to go and pay our respects to her altar–a sort of lars familiarum containing photos of her deceased grandparents and incense–and to spin her brass Tibetan prayer wheel three times. We then sat down and ate about forty buuz with salad, goat meat, brashk, airag, vodka, and milk tea.

Zaya's ger

Zaya (foreground) and another student, Chimgee (background)

Zaya and Chimgee

Zaya's mom and Chimgee. Her mom is sitting next to the stove, which is supporting a jignur--a tray designed for steaming buuz.

We left after Zaya gave us money and candy and headed to another household for a repeat of the same meal, sans spice, and about twenty times more vodka than I was prepared for. The walk home this evening is blurry in mind as I write this, but I have these charming photos to prove it happened:

Anyway, as promised, a quick rant on the cultural and collectivist benefits of Tsagaan Sar.

If it’s not obvious already, I’m fascinated by collectivism, and it’s getting to the point where anything that even remotely suggests roots in, or promulgation of, collectivist behavior practically screams out at me.  I have to turn it over in my mind and think about it and record it. Tsagaan Sar is no different. In fact, I would say that this holiday is one of the most glaring examples of Mongolian collectivist culture possible; the exchange of gifts, the obscenely high amounts of money spent on preparing food and sweets and alcohol on guests, not to mention home preparation–all of this month-long effort is churned into an enormous financial, social, culinary mutuality! Everyone–regardless of socioeconomic status–hosts, and everyone visits. Almost in the same way that Halloween candy is snatched up in stores and hoarded until kids come around and receive it at our doorsteps, individual Mongolians’ tireless efforts and exhausted salaries culminate to contribute to a vast redistribution of community wealth and resources, and it happens every single year. Most communities observe the official first three days of Tsagaan Sar, but many people consider it to be a February 1st- January 31st holiday; a family who hosts and visits everyone they know in Arvaikheer during Feburary and decides to summer in the countryside seven months later might go through the entire Tsagaan Sar greeting-and-eating process when they finally get to see their relatives in the summertime. Like so much else, this depends on the community, on the family, on the individual at hand.

I’ve said it before, but I’ve most definitely experienced problems in the community integration process since I arrived here last August. I thought my coworkers’ sudden flight to the countryside would leave me lonely and bored during this incredible holiday, and the thought of missing out got to me more and more every minute I had to wait. When those invitations started coming, though, I’m not sure I can liken the sentiment to anything I’ve felt since I’ve been here. The only thing that surpassed this feeling of being included in positivity was the actual process of participating in the holiday, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Mandokhae, Chimgee, Zaya, and I outside of Zaya's house