New Year here in Georgia

Now I want to tell you about how we celebrate New Year in Georgia. There are certain traditions that people have here and we do them all the time every year.

We make special preparations to celebrate New Year. First of all, there are some traditional meals to be prepared. According to our traditions, we should have Gozinaki, Churchkela and Satsivi on the table. And then there are some other dishes, and usually, the New Year table is really splendid at our house. However, there are many people who are fasting and it ends on January 7, so they can't have all those Satsivi and stuff like that on New Year.

At the midnight, people get out and shoot their guns. There are special speeches from the Patriarch and the president and some important figures on TV for all the Georgians and people celebrating this New Year all over the world.

Then comes Mekvle - the very first person who enters the house and says: “I have stepped into your house. May God bless you. May I bring you happiness. ” People in the house give Mekvle Gozinaki and candies and tell him to sit down and say to him: “may your old ages be as sweet as this is”, pointing at Gozinaki, as it is very sweet, because it’s made from honey.

I like the last habit of our tradition: everyone has candies in their pockets and when they meet people - their relatives, etc. they give candies to each other. I call that an exchange - and they tell each other: “happy New Year! ”

Everyone has a New Year tree. So there is a New Year tree in my house, too.

Christmas trees basically are decorated on either of those two days: Christmas or on New Year's eve. Me and my family traditionally decorate Christmas trees on Christmas. Well, that's kind of complicated, because the Orthodox Church celebrated Christmas on January 7th, but Catholics celebrate it on 25th of December. So, when I say we decorate our Christmas trees on Christmas, I mean that one of Catholics', because if we decorated them in January, we would have a New Year without Christmas tree. And for some reasons (with the Georgia being in Soviet Union and stuff), our Christmas trees are associated with the New Year mostly, than Christmas. So it's unimaginable not to have a Christmas tree on New Year and, since December 25th isn't the day everyone celebrated Christmas, they decorate the trees on New Year's eve. That's a good idea, too.

Everyone has a Christmas tree on Christmas or New year, as I said. And they decorate it and put it in the room.

Some people cut down natural fir-trees, but some have artificial ones.

I think everyone should have artificial trees, because of some reasons. Firstly, we won't cut down trees, if we have an artificial fir-tree. Hence, there will be more trees left to enrich the environment and emit oxygen. Secondly, our fir-trees won't be for one use only and can be used for some years.

I have an artificial New Year fir-tree, which was bought in a market. We decorate our New Year tree on 25th of December. Well, to be accurate, at night of 24th of December… on that day children go door to door and sing “Alilo”. We keep our New Year tree till my birthday, the 16th of January. Then we save it in a place where it will be the rest of the year until the next 24-th of December.

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