Entries about celebration

The months have flown by and I realize I have neglected updating this blog. But I do have some lovely events and places to catch you up about.

Last month Azerbaijan celebrated new year, better known as the Novruz holiday! The celebration marks the start of springtime and a new year. The preparation started a month before the actual holiday with Fire, Water, Earth and Wind weeks celebrated with bonfires and candles each Tuesday. But the proper celebration started on Holiday eve with a family dinner and Novruz games!

I was surprised to see many similarities of the Norwegian Easter traditions in the Novruz celebration. Easter and Novruz is even celebrated around the same time. Much like the modern Norwegian easter Novruz is a family-centric holiday, its a time to celebrate, eat good food, candy and be with family. Its not religious, but stems from the pre-Islamic period of Azerbaijan and its fire-worshipping traditions.

How to celebrate Novruz?
Eggs, children traditionally paint the eggs colorfully, but if you are a bit lazy just put a stamp or a plastic egg wrapper aroud it. You can also have an egg fight! You and your opponent have one egg each and takes turns trying to crack the others egg. If your egg cracks you loose.

Fire Fire plays a special role in Azeri tradition, and especially during Novruz times. During the dinner candles are lit for each person at the table. But more excitingly are the bonfires that marks the streets! All over the city people make bonfires to jump over. You should jump over it three times while wishing for what you want for the next year; this ensures you are cleansed and ready for the new year.
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Sweets & games It wouldn't be a celebration without sweets. The traditional sweets for this time is Shekibura, Baklava as well as dried fruits and nuts. Children also go to the neighbors knocking the door, quickly running away before they are seen but leaving their hats. The person opening the door should leave sweets in the hat for the children to pick up later

Predicting the Future new years is often a time of reflection and making wishes for the year ahead, and that also plays a part of Novruz. Predictions in particular are important. One way is to sneak up to your neighbors door trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. This will predict what the next year will bring to you. There is also many games and activities for single girls to predict who is their future husband, I didn't manage to take a part of that this year though..

Again I should mention this is not a religious holiday, so its mainly fun and games, but it was a very interesting thing to be a part of, take a look at these clips of some of my celebration of Novruz 2014

Time passes fast and I'm quickly approaching my 6-month anniversary of arriving in Azerbaijan. That day will also make the start of the december advent time, and we can already see the stores are starting to get ready for Christmas. The approaching festivities make me think back on the more special days I have participated in over this time.

In these 6 months I've seen and experienced many things, so I thought to write a few notes on some holidays and celebrations I've experienced. The most noteworthy must be the exciting wedding I got to be a part of!

So, In September I participated in my first azerbaijani wedding, I was thrilled to get to experience this as wedding was on the top of my list of what I wanted to experience. Joining a wedding in any country is always a special event, but especially seeing foreign wedding traditions is a great memory.

The event we joined was "the girls wedding", so it was just the first part of the wedding of sorts. Let me be explain, there are two "weddings" in Azerbaijan: "The girl wedding" is actually an engagement party, it makes the engagement official, but the couple is not living together yet. Then some months later the "boys wedding" is the real wedding and the couple is husband and wife with all that entails.

The wedding started at the girls house, where aunts, grandma, mom and friends (and me!) were hanging out with the (slightly nervous) bride-to-be. The mood was giddy with excitement and relatives in other countries Skyped to participate by long-distance. People were chatting and hanging out while we waited for the boys family. After some time someone burst in saying that tha car had arrived, and nervous laughter and last minute make-up checks were done before the family came carrying baskets of sweets. After a photo-shoot the couple were escorted out to a waiting car, and we quickly followed as we went off to the wedding palace. All single girls (me included) were carrying the baskets of the sweets as we drove over to the celebration place. (I suppose to wish us luck or encourage us to find a man soon)

The wedding palace is elaborately decorated halls with circular tables filled to the brim with food and sweets. In the middle of the room on a "stage" the couple sits in front of a dance space. After a bit of waiting for everyone to arrive the couple entered the room, cameras were fixed on the couple as they entered and the ceremony where the couple put the ring on each others fingers. The ceremonial part of the wedding was over, but now the feast started! New, delicious dishes constantly came to the table and I got to try dolma, plov, kebabs and many Azerbiajani dishes. The waiter noticing I was not from Azerbaijan took special attention to me, bringing me two of everything, so I came home stuffed to the brim after that.

The couple is quite young, so the music was a mix of modern (English, spanish, french, russian) and traditional azerbaijani songs, which of course we were dancing to! Now, I'm terrible at dancing, but to everyones amusement I was dragged onto the dance floor several times (dancing my awkward version of azerbaijani dance, but having even children outdoing me).

Take a look at this small video I compiled