Ulaanbaatar
How Mongolians celebrate new year’s eve
PoliticsUlaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The Mongolians have ceremonial dinner in the New Lunar year’s eve. It is called Bituun, regarding the avsence of sight of moon in this particular 30th night of the lunar month. According to the Mongolian-Tibetan calendar, Bituun is being observed on February 8.
On Bituun, a person should payback whatever debt he/she has, meet whomever he/she has an unsolved argument and make peace with each other. Days before Bituun, every family cleans the ger (national dwelling) and house until everything is spotless.
Women prepare food and traditional meals, including the boiled sheep’s back (uuts), traditional pastries (ul boov) built into ceremonial food set (tavgiin idee) and rice cooked with butter, sugar and raisins (berees), while men catch and groom their horses.
Once the dinner is ready, all family members dress up in their new deels or fancy clothes, offer parts of their meals to gods and finally have dinner.
A boiled head or chest of a sheep acts as the main dish of Bituun. Other dished include dumplings, buuz, khuushuur. Traditionally, packs of buuz and dumplings are delivered to neighbors by children. Housewives put silver coins in some of the buuz and dumplings, and the person who eats the “lucky” buuz or dumplings is said to be fortunate in the coming year.
Certain activities are avoided on Bituun as taboos, including spending this day in other people’s houses, beating a dog, going outside chewing, pouring water and other liquids to the ground, leaving the clothes outside, calling babies with their own names, arguing, and being hungry.
