Tsagaan Sar: Mongolia’s New Year

Tsagaan Sar: Mongolia’s New Year

This year, the Mongolian New Year festival, Tsagaan Sar (White Month) will be celebrated on Friday 12 February. Each New Year in a sixty-year cycle has a different name; the coming year will be called ‘Tsagaagchin Uher Jil’, literally ‘year of the White Cow’. The new year is calculated with the lunar calendar, and so it falls on a different date every time, generally at the end of January or in February.

This festival is as important and popular as Christmas in Western countries. It is a national holiday when extended families gather to pay mutual respects.  

According to historical tradition, this festival originated at the time of Chinggis Khaan. It is recorded that in 1207, on the first morning of the ‘Ulaagchin Tuulai Jil’ (year of the Red Hare), Chinggis began the day early by praying to the Eternal Blue Sky and his own holy mountain. He made offerings to his ancestors and then went to pay his respects to his mother Ho’elun. Since this time, Tsagaan Sar has become an important national celebration for all Mongolians, rooted in their nomadic traditions.

Pastoral nomads rely entirely on their livestock throughout every season. Winters in Mongolia can be particularly harsh, although in fact, spring is considered the most difficult time for herders. Despite the warmer weather, livestock are generally weak after the long bitter winter. Thus Tsagaan Sar symbolises the end of winter and hope for the beginning of spring.

At this time, people reflect on their lives, pray, remember their ancestors and pay respects to elders by visiting them in a formal sequence of seniority. The most sacred food for nomads is ‘tsagaan idee’, (white food) a wide variety of milk-based foods and drinks. Specific sorts of white food are used on the festival day, even now. The combination of white food and positive, morally pure reflection together sum up the meaning of the Tsagaan Sar festival.

Over the centuries since Chinggis’s time, through many political changes, the Tsagaan Sar celebration has continuously evolved. It has been enriched by incorporating various Buddhist elements since this faith reached Mongolia in the 17^th century. Despite these changes, its underlying symbolism has still maintained its integrity.  

For a time under Communism there was a ban on celebrating the festival, which was seen as something limited to rural herders and less relevant in towns. Nevertheless, it continued to be celebrated with great enthusiasm in the countryside.

I have vivid childhood memories from those days of how we celebrated it in Hovsgol, in the far north of the country. We have a large extended family, so preparations would start months ahead. As the date drew nearer, we cleaned our ‘ger’ (yurt) meticulously, organised gifts for our guests and began making various foods such as meat dumplings, ‘buuz’, large deep-fried, decorated pastries called ‘ul boov’, and finally cooking a carefully-jointed fat-tailed sheep, a special style known as ‘uuts’. These three tasks, but particularly preparing ‘ul boov’ and ‘uuts’, require special skills. As head of our immediate family, my father used to do this particularly with notable skill, and he would then be invited to help other close relatives as well.

Dumpling-making ahead of Tsaagan Sar is a delightful family activity and a good excuse to exchange news. We generally made around 4000 of these ‘buuz’ and everybody, big and small alike, got involved; even some from the extended family or neighbours would lend a hand. The higher the family’s status, the more food of this sort they would have to prepare, since more people would be coming to pay respects to them. My grandparents on both sides would make even more ‘buuz’ than us, since as heads of the entire family they would have many more visitors. We didn’t have freezers at the time, but there was no need for them; as soon as a batch was made, they would be carried outside on a large board, where the winter cold, typically at least minus 25 degrees Celsius, would freeze them immediately. Then they would be loaded into a sack until needed for Tsagaan Sar. They were then steamed, directly from frozen.

On the day, we would all put on our best clean clothes including new robes, ‘deel’, if we had them. In those days, children would receive small gifts such as sweets, pencils, notebooks, small sums of money and the like. Since then, inevitably, the gift-giving at Tsagaan Sar has become more commercialised.

When visiting relatives in the country, I would join my cousins on a ride or walk to the top of the local holy mountain or a nearby sacred cairn, ‘ovoo’, before sunrise, to pay respects to the mountains and local spirits. This tradition is still very much alive throughout Mongolia.

Actually, the day before Tsagaan Sar, known as ‘Bituun’, is celebrated with equal ceremony. Since it is the last day of the old year, this celebration bids the departing year farewell. On Bituun, it is conventional to cook special dishes such as a whole sheep’s head, fried meat patties called ‘huushuur’ and large boiled cuts of beef. The rest of that day is spent cleaning the family shrines in the ger, sorting out any disputes or unfinished business with others and performing various charitable deeds, such as feeding one’s family dog and livestock generously. The Bituun celebration begins in the evening after various ritual observances. Nevertheless, we children always managed to find time to play traditional games with sheep ankle-bones, ‘shagai’ (astragalus), including two called ‘alag melhii’ (dappled frog), and ‘mori uralduulah’ (racing horses), as well as sort of dominoes with the 12 lunar calendrical year animals on them, called ‘horol’.

Tsagaan Sar proper begins with a ritual called ‘mur gargah’ (to set forth one’s tracks). Generally, the head of the family will have consulted a lama or used a Buddhist astrological almanac, to obtain specific instructions for each family member based on the animal-year of their birth. Each person then carries out these instructions, which involve setting out from home in a particular direction, performing a ritual gesture such as scattering a particular substance while reciting their chosen mantra between seven to 21 times, and then returning home from a specific different direction. Performing this ritual is intended to bring fortune and success in the coming year and to ensure family wellbeing.

From personal experience I have found that it is much easier to perform ‘mur gargah’ from a ger in the open countryside. When you live in an urban area, especially in a flat, the whole process becomes more complicated! Nevertheless, most people in town still take this ritual seriously, and whether in Ulaanbaatar (UB) or abroad they perform it as best they can.

The formal Tsagaan Sar greetings, ‘zolgoh’, start later in the morning. According to custom, families first visit the oldest or most respected senior member of the extended clan, or a respected senior colleague from work. Most of the time the households of these seniors would be packed with family members, all colourfully dressed, greeting each other and exchanging good wishes for the new year. After the first formal greeting, it is usual, especially among men, briefly to exchange snuff bottles, often treasured family heirlooms, and while taking snuff, to use traditional greeting phrases such as

‘Targan saihan havarjij baina uu?’ (Are you spending spring well and fatly? i.e are your livestock fat?)

‘Biye lagshin tungalag uu?’ (Is your honourable body transparent? (i.e. are you in good health?)

Daaga dalantai, byaruu bulchintai, tulug suultei targan saihan havarjij baina uu? (Are you spending spring well and fatly, with fat on the necks of your two-year-old horses, with well-muscled two-year old calves, with young sheep who have fat tails?)

As the above examples show, most of these set phrases derive directly from the nomad herding culture and carry traditional symbolism as a result. It doesn’t matter whether the people using them are in the country or in the city, or whether they have livestock or not; they will still use these traditional formulae.

At this point, after tea with milk has been served, it is customary for everyone to take a small piece from the top layer of an elaborate arrangement of dried curds, ‘aruul’, and other delicacies on a special tray set on the table in front of the host. Later, carefully carved slices of the ‘uuts’ mutton are handed out, followed by bowls of dumplings.       

Today more than half of Mongolia’s population live in urban areas. Tsagaan Sar celebrations have evolved to fit in with their modern lifestyle, particularly in recent years, as the economy has developed. In order to save time  and to avoid the expense and complex preparations involved in traditional celebrations, some city-based families gather and greet one another in restaurants. Alternatively, ready-made ‘buuz’, ‘ul boov’ and other festival foods can also be bought in shops and markets.  

Despite the fact that like Christmas, this festival is becoming more and more expensive and commercialised, for the time being one can say that the spirit and symbolism of Tsagaan Sar remains unchanged. The basic concept is that carrying out one’s family duties correctly at the start of the year will ensure good luck and prosperity for the remainder.

Sadly this year, the official media agency MONTSAME has published a government announcement that Tsagaan Sar will not be allowed to proceed as usual as a result of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the country since November 2020. There will be no national wrestling competition, nor any knuckle-bone tournaments. Starting from Bituun, 11 February, there will be a national lockdown for the fortnight until 23 February. During this time, travel between towns and cities will be severely restricted and anyone found breaking this rule will be fined 500,00T (about £150, about two weeks’ average wage).

So it comes about that this year’s Tsagaan Sar will have to be celebrated under lockdown. Since UB has been designated as the main source of infections, here celebrations will be restricted to immediate family. In the provinces and countryside, restrictions may be less rigid. Some families have already made their ‘buuz’ and prepared their formal food trays for the table as normal- but inevitably, on a much smaller and simpler scale.

Greetings online will be the new trend this year as more families will have to greet each other and celebrate their Tsagaan Sar apart. In addition, other virtual meetings are being planned by private social groups and Mongolian Embassies abroad, to enable participants to enjoy organised musical performances and story-telling. As always, Mongolians will make best use of whatever means they can to enjoy this much-loved event. (images: Namsrai Henderson)

Sar shinedee saihan shineleerei!  Have a lovely New Year celebration!