Holidays in Mongolia

Tsagaan sar
Tsagaan sar is Mongolian natural celebration which held every February that means our new year. The event which celebrates both the end of the winter and the beginning of the spring, is every Mongolians visit to others to wish their home to be successful, lucky, gainful in the new year.
Last year, we had been preparing for the “Tsagaan sar” for half months because it was precious year. We made some bakery, pot some sheep meat from its hip, preserved some frozen milk to make our traditional tea “Milk tea”. Also, we made kind of dumpling in our own and froze it 10 days before. About one month before we found our traditional costume “Deel” to wear. Usually, Mongolians sew the costume in their own but our family didn’t have the enough skill to do.
In the day before the “ Tsagaan sar” day called Tsagaan sar’s eve, as soon as the first star starts to shine we celebrate it just in our family, eating our dumplings and meat, drinking milk tea.
After that, the important day comes. We woke up very early, as soon as the sun shines, wore our prepared costumes and my mother would made milk tea so we drink it and went out to see the new sun of this year and made our footprint on new snow. In the middle of the day, we started to go out and went every our relatives from door to door. In their house, we greeted each other and we eat their prepared dumpling, meat, drink milk tea. The greeting is a little bit different, the older person must hold his/her hand on the younger person’s hand and must kiss each other. When it’s time to go the visitors the host must give some prepared gifts to them anything they like.
The next day we went to our relatives, we stayed at home and the others come to us. For this time, we gave our prepared dumpling and meats, milk tea and gifts.
When the time we finishes we were very exhausted, and our house was dirty, food was empty but we were very happy that the new year’s first couple of days were very fantastic.
The “Tsagaan sar” means not only celebrating our new year but also has many advantages such us, meeting our relatives, letting their children to know their relatives, making their relationship more closely.