Winter holidays – Christmas and Shin Jil (New Years)

Happy belated holidays from Mongolia! I haven’t updated in quite  a while. Now, I will tell you about the past couple of weeks during the Mongolian holiday season.

Most Mongolians don’t celebrate Christmas, yet UB and the countryside are covered with tinsel and lights. If Mongolians don’t celebrate Christmas, why are there Xmas decorations everywhere? Because Mongolians celebrate New Years for up to two weeks before Jan 1st. The last two weeks of December are filled with parties and celebrations. I came back to Arvaikheer from UB on Dec. 16th and the city had been transformed into a tacky winter wonderland.

As I walked through the market from the bus stop to my ger, I saw half a dozen makeshift stalls selling plastic Christmas trees, strings of lights, ornaments, Santa Claus hats, elf costumes, etc… For the first half of Dec I had been in UB at Peace Corps trainings, where I saw the same Christmas extreme, if not more. In UB a huge Christmas tree was put up in both Sukbaatar Square and in front of the State Dept. Store. However, I thought it was just the major western influence in the capitol city that caused the throw up of glitter everywhere.

I was very surprised to see Christmas decorations available in my town halfway through December. But I guess the timing is typical Mongolian fashion. The goods are available just when or after they are needed. In contrast, in America, many people begin decorating around Thanksgiving, sometimes before that, for the holiday season. In my opinion, way too early. Although, I do like to have the holiday feeling for over a month in America.

Even with all of the tacky tinsel hanging from the ceilings, it didn’t feel like Christmas to me until I got a package from home with my grandmother’s holiday cookies and hot chocolate mix with marshmellows. On Friday, Dec. 19th I received four packages from the post office. Most of them were filled with Christmas-y things and food goods. Once I got the packages, I was able to cook some Christmas-y American food.

The week leading up to Christmas, my work was busy planning “Entrepreneur 2008,” otherwise known as our New Year party. Many organizations use their party to celebrate their successes from the previous year, with the mandatory Mongolian awards ceremony. Also, it is a reason to have a party and see friends.

It is also an excuse to get a New Year’s dress made… THE NEW YEAR’S DRESS. That’s all I could hear about for a week. New Year’s dresses are a big deal for the ladies. The men just wear a regular suit, but the women get a new dress every year. My opinion of most Mongolian New Year’s dresses is that they look a little like an 80’s prom dress, with a few elegant exceptions.

My counterparts began asking me about my New Year’s dress around Thanksgiving. I kept telling them that I wasn’t going to get a New Year’s dress because the Peace Corps budget doesn’t leave any room for New Year’s dresses. Also, I have plenty of dresses in America. I figured if they really wanted me to wear a sparkly New Year’s dress, they’d purchase it for me. It turns out that they didn’t want me to wear a dress that bad.

Many of my Mongolian friends had 3-7 New Year’s parties to attend! They usually wear the same dress to all of the parties. Along with getting their hair done everyday and slathering glitter lotion all over themselves. For some reason, I find it really odd that I’ve typed this much about a dress… moving on…

On Christmas Eve, all of the American PCVs and some of our Mongolian friends gathered at a ger. We cooked a horhog, which is goat meat cooked with vegetables in a container with rocks. The rocks make the meat taste very good, along with our American meat spices. We learned that Mongolians typically don’t eat horhog in the wintertime, only in the summer. We shared a few Christmas traditions with our Mongolian friends, sang songs, and talked about the holidays.

The horhog container with goat meat and vegetables

Eating goat meat and fat on Christmas Eve

On Christmas morning, the Americans were supposed to gather at 11am to have a brunch. However, I didn’t feel like waking up too early on Christmas day, so I got out of bed around 10am. Then, I had to prepare chicken enchiladas for the brunch. This ended up taking 6 hours. Why? Making the tortillas from scratch took about 1.5 hours. And also having a limited supply of cooking utensils made the process long. I ended up at the “brunch” around 4pm.

The “brunch” didn’t begin until 5pm, when all of the food was finally prepared. The food consisted of chicken enchiladas, egg nog, potato pancakes, biscuits and gravy, horse meat curry, pumpkin bread, ginger bread. Yum! Somehow we pulled our resources to make a semi-Christmas-y meal.

All throughout the day my coworkers and director were calling to ask where I was and why I wasn’t at work. I was very confused because I told them multiple times about Christmas and why I wasn’t going to be at work that day. After working out the situation, I figured out that they thought that Christmas and New Years were the same thing and didn’t realize that Christmas was an actual day.

We watched Home Alone on Christmas. My mom recorded the movie from America and mailed it to me. We even watched all of the commercials, to find out new things from America. We began How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but some of the volunteers had New Years parties to attend – including me.

Food coma after eating Christmas brunch, while watching Home Alone

I had very little desire to attend my work’s New Year’s party, just because it was on Christmas and I wanted to be around my American friends to share the holiday. Once I arrived at the New Year’s party, I was seated next to the new aimag governor. That evening, I wasn’t in the mood to put on the “show” of being an “American,” because I was wanting to be at home in America with my family.

The CCI’s Entrepreneur 2008 was quite a scripted party, as most are. We had emcees with overly exaggerated voices hosting the event. There was an agenda with singers from the community, a couple of waltz numbers, a skit by Father Christmas and the Snow Girls, etc… The evening was filled with the awards ceremony and toasts and speeches. Between the awards, the Rocky theme song was played. Between every other event, the “New Year” song by ABBA played.

Me, Zoloo (my director), Aagii, Ganaa, and Oyunaa at Entrepreneur 2008

My counterparts and I in front of the stage decorations

In conclusion of New Year celebrations, I would say that “Happy New Year” by ABBA and “Last Christmas” (I gave you my heart, the very next day, you gave it away) are the most popular songs during the month of December.

During the last couple of weeks in December, I didn’t do much work because my coworkers went to a party almost every night and then were tired the next day.

Dec 31st, my Mongolian friend, Uugana had all of the PCVs over to her apartment for a lunch. We ate boats and made a champagne toast.

Champagne toast for the new year

On the actual New Year’s Eve, most Mongolians stay in with their families. The PCVs in Arvaikheer gathered at a ger, with plans to go to a disco. The disco plans fell through, but we walked to the town square around midnight.

Surprisingly, my community sets off its own fireworks show around midnight. It is all the work of many families. The fireworks show doesn’t come from one central location, like I’m used to in the U.S. It comes from many hashaas setting off fireworks all around the town. Being in the square at midnight, you just turn around in a circle and see fireworks across the whole town. It was amazing!

New Year's Eve in the Arvaikheer square "Shin Jil 2009"

I hope all of you had a good holiday season. Now, I have Internet on my own computer at work – so I promise to update more often. Good luck in 2009!