The big holiday here is New Year’s day. Many details closely resemble Christmas. There are elaborately decorated Christmas trees, in a style any American would recognize, children are given gifts on New Year’s Eve and there is Ayaz Baba - Grandpa Frost - who dresses like Santa and brings these presents. He is accompanied by Garpamyk - Snow Maiden. The whole week of New Years, American Christmas movies dubbed into Turkmen play on TV, with “Christmas” replaced by “Taze Yyl,” or New Year’s. On Russian satellite TV, Russian and American Christmas movies air almost constantly, just as the week before Christmas in America. At work, my colleagues kept asking if I knew “Kevin” in a movie, and after a great deal of confusion, I realized they were asking me about “Home Alone.” Given my ignorance of Russian and Soviet culture, I’m not sure if this style of New Year’s came from the Soviets or not.
Two days before Christmas, there was a large party at work, and I couldn’t help but think of something I heard from a friend; that for adults, the work holiday party is your whole life (a tip o’ the nib to Sarah Berkowitz). In the morning, everyone at my clinic pitched in to make manty, steamed meat dumplings, for the clinic. I was whisked away by my work friend Shemshat to a local kindegarten because I had promised to take pictures of her niece. Little did I realize that I was to witness the fabled Turkmen New Year pageant, and there were four separate groups. Four times, a group of elaborately dressed kindergarteners trouped in to the sound of keyboard synth, clapped for Ayaz Baba, shouted poetry to the audience, shouted a song, received candy from Ayaz Baba, and trouped off again. The older children also performed little vaudevillian sketches. Nearly every girl was dressed as Garpamyk, with an elaborate white or gold dress, many with wands, their hair curled, silver glitter everywhere and eye shadow on their five-year old faces. Naturally, I was enchanted by a spectacle so closely and bizarrely resembling American practice, even if four times around was a bit much.
Back at work, we ate our manty in the clinic, made toasts to the New Year (I am inevitably called upon to make a toast, as a guest), then headed for the hospital wide New Years carnival. I was nervous because I had agreed to perform a Turkmen song with one of my colleagues, for which I felt largely unprepared. I found out only the day before that we would be singing with dutar accompaniment. At this same colleague’s request, I was also singing an English Christmas song. Through out this New Years season, I have been asked to supply American holiday songs, and I realize that despite the abundance of these songs, I know complete words to very very few. For the holiday carnival, I chose the first verse of “Deck the Halls” because it was lively, I knew it, and I felt it appropriately secular. As I found out at the carnival, each work unit had prepared a little skit for the day, and these skits or songs were interspersed with dancing. I had no idea what was happening in most of the skits, but I’m fairly sure that many of them mocked Uzbeks and Russians, although the exact attitudes I am unsure of. Of course, everyone was excited that an American had learned a Turkmen folksong, so the ill-rehearsed performance went over well. The next day, December 31, everyone went into work at 8 am as usual, drank tea, socialized for two hours, then went home again.
THIS IS THE END
14 years ago
