Before college students travel home to rejoice Tsagaan Sar, Mongolia’s Lunar New Year, Dagdansengee Delgersaikhan, the final secretary of the scholar ministry IFES in Mongolia, discusses with the scholars how one can approach the country’s biggest holiday with their recent Christian faith.
It’s good to respect your parents, Delgersaikhan tells them, but there are specific rituals steeped in Buddhism and shamanism that they’ll not participate in, comparable to bowing to family idols or walking in a certain direction for good luck. She guides them on how one can keep good relationships with their family while kindly explaining that, because they’re Christians, they’ll not take part on a number of the traditions.
Delgersaikhan speaks from experience. She remembers 20 years ago when she approached her father nervously on the morning of Tsagaan Sar and told him that she wouldn’t be joining the remaining of the family as they went out to perform prayers. Instead, she would stay home and make them a hot pot of milk tea for once they returned home. He agreed.
For Christians in the bulk Buddhist country, celebrating Tsagaan Sar—which begins Saturday—looks different from before they got here to faith. Some Christians don’t engage in the vacation in any respect due to its spiritual roots, while others find ways to embrace the positive points of spending time with family and respecting elders while refraining from practices that conflict with their faith.
The gathering of so many individuals also makes it “a very good time to testify about Jesus,” Delgersaikhan said. Conversations about faith can pop up over preparing buuz, steamed meat dumplings, or during visits to the homes of relatives.
“We encourage them that that is a very good time to testify about ourselves, about Jesus,” she said. “Go home and serve them and show them good hospitality, shock them and they’re going to say, ‘Why is he so hospitable?’ And after that share the gospel.”
Gathering with family and looking for good luck
Tsagaan Sar, which suggests “white moon,” is the most important holiday in Mongolia, marking the top of Mongolia’s long winter—which might reach −20 degrees F (−28 degrees C)—and the start of spring. While Genghis Khan decreed the vacation within the thirteenth century, it wasn’t until the seventeenth century that Buddhist leaders began to include Buddhist elements into Tsagaan Sar. When Communism took over Mongolia in 1924, leaders prohibited the vacation because it was viewed as religious. Yet many Mongolians continued to rejoice it quietly, said Bolortuya Damdinjav of the Mongolian Evangelical Alliance. When democracy got here within the Nineties, Mongolians began to rejoice Lunar New Year widely again.
“Most Christians view it as a cultural or traditional holiday,” said Damdinjav, “We eliminated the religious parts but we still see it as a time to fulfill our family and show respect for that.”
Families start preparing for Tsagaan Sar weeks prematurely, cleansing the home, buying ingredients, and making and freezing tons of of buuz for the guests who will visit through the three days of Tsagaan Sar. The day before the New Year is generally known as Bituun, meaning “to shut down,” when people clean the home, repay debts, and feast to finish the 12 months with a full belly. They light candles to represent Buddha’s enlightenment and leave ice on the door of their homes, as they consider the local diety Baldanlkham visits every family on a mule, and the ice gives the mule something to drink.
The next day, families dress up in traditional Mongolian clothes, generally known as a deel (which resembles a tunic), and the matriarch brews milk tea. The first cup is obtainable to the gods. They use their zodiac sign to find out which direction they need to step out of their homes on the morning of New Year’s day as a way to bring success. Some Mongolians climb to the mountaintop to view the primary sunrise of the 12 months and want for good luck.
Mongolian families then visit their grandparents or oldest living relatives. At each home, the younger people greet their elders by grasping their elbows and asking, “Are you living peacefully?” and the elders kiss each their cheeks. They give gifts of cash while children receive toys and play games. They eat buuz and ul boov pastries stacked in an odd variety of tiers to suggest good luck, in addition to cooked lamb hide, dairy products, and candies. Conversations concentrate on joyful topics to bring more good things in the brand new 12 months.
Families then move on to go to other relatives and neighbors for the following three days. People also visit the temple and ask for a fortune from the lama, set out food for household idols, and perform prayers.
Celebrating Tsagaan Sar as Christians
When Amaraa Jargalsaikhan became a Christian, family and friends asked, How could you turn out to be a Christian? If you’re a Christian you’ll lose all of your identity … you can’t rejoice Tsagaan Sar! Yet Jargalsaikhan sees Tsagaan Sar as a novel time to share the gospel.
Formerly one among the pastors at Amid Ug (Living Water) Christian Church in Ulaanbaatar, the most important church in Mongolia, he noted that sometimes non-Christians didn’t need a visit from a pastor. Yet on Tsagaan Sar, everyone was welcomed into the house. When he sat within the homes of relatives and neighbors and so they caught up on their lives, he talked about his “reason for becoming a Christian and the differences [between Christianity from Buddhism] and the nice things about it.” From these conversations on Tsagaan Sar, several members of the family ended up visiting Jargalsaikhan’s church.
“I believe it’s a very good time to share the gospel,” Jargalsaikhan said. “We [tried] to not wreck the mood, because some people get offended in case you say something about a unique religion.”
When Tsagaan Sar fell on a Sunday, Jargalsaikhan’s church continued to carry services at the same time as they found that attendance—which usually numbered 1,000 across three services—dropped significantly. The pastors took turns leading different services in order that all of them had a possibility to go to relatives. Often from the pulpit, Jargalsaikhan would preach about how Tsagaan Sar was a possibility to share the gospel and would tell others how God had worked of their lives.
Today, Jargalsaikhan and his family live in Chicago, where he’s ministering at Antioch Mongolian Christian Church. While he and his family don’t have relatives to go to, they’ll still placed on the standard deel, cook buuz and ul boov, and video chat together with his parents back in Mongolia. Then they visit the members of their church, especially the older congregants—though in America they must ask to return over, unlike in Mongolia, where people show up unannounced.
Standing firm while respecting parents
Delgersaikhan of IFES also noted that Tsagaan Sar is a first-rate opportunity for Christians to talk about their faith, because individuals are often respectful toward each other through the holiday and since they see so many family and friends. Some Christian families will give their guests small Bibles or stationary sets with Bible verses. There’s also a possibility to do “hospitality for them thoroughly and to be kind … to share personal testimonies.” She noted that, nowadays, some people not see the vacation as a strategy to serve each other, or they only use Tsagaan Sar as a strategy to showcase their wealth. Christians might be different by being humble.
Before students leave for the vacations, IFES also holds a Tsagaan Sar celebration on campus. Christian students invite their friends to return wearing deels to eat, drink, play games, and learn in regards to the Christian faith. She reminds the IFES students that there will probably be many rituals they need to not take part in. For instance, they shouldn’t go along with their families to climb the mountain to see the sun rising and pray for blessings. “Our God, we will pray to him anywhere, anytime, not only New Year morning,” she reminds them.
Some of the Christian students who return home to the countryside for the New Year—especially in areas where Buddhism still has a really strong hold—find themselves facing stronger pressures to affix in on the religious rituals. She noted that once they come back from break, some are glad because they were in a position to refuse to participate, but others are sad because they may not. If parents are very insistent that they have to join them in a number of the religious rituals, Delgersaikhan tells them they’ll pray to God silently.
Yet typically, she’s found that young Christians as of late face less backlash than those a generation before. She said that students today are more honest and open in sharing with their parents about their conversion and their spiritual journey, and lots of parents usually are not upset that their children don’t wish to partake within the rituals. Sometimes parents also see positive changes of their children’s behavior—comparable to giving up smoking, drinking, or cursing—so that they have a more positive view of Christianity.
“In my time, we were very scared [of] our parents, but now students are very open to share what they consider in,” Delgersaikhan said. “Some countryside people say it’s a very good thing.”
Talking about Jesus while wrapping buuz
Bolortuya Damdinjav of the Mongolian Evangelical Alliance said her favorite memory of Tsagaan Sar while growing up was on a regular basis spent together with her members of the family, whether it was preparing for the vacation by cleansing and making buuz or visiting older relatives and meeting with clan that she rarely sees.
Damdinjav, along together with her mother and sister, became Christians in 1993 just a few months before Tsagaan Sar, and he or she remembers that vacation being a giant step of courage. The day before the New Year, her grandma, who was staying with them, fell very unwell, so the family began praying for her. At the time, they still had some idols of their home, yet Damdinjav felt God telling her to do away with the idols and the opposite religious items in the home. She told her mother, and the 2 of them threw the items into the fireplace.
The next day, her grandmother began feeling higher. When her other grandmother and relatives came visiting, they immediately went to where the idols had stood to indicate respect, but were shocked to search out nothing there. Damdinjav feared that they might be indignant, but as an alternative they didn’t say anything about it; they sat and ate with them, after which they left. They never brought it up again.
“In some families, [the removal of idols] is usually a big debate, and other people could argue with one another,” she noted. “But by some means, I believe God protected us, and since then, our house has been clean, free [of idols].”
Damdinjav has found that the most effective time to speak in regards to the gospel with family is while wrapping buuz. Everybody is relaxed and chatting to pass the time as they make tons of of tasty dumplings. During those conversations, she’s had the chance to inform her relatives why she believes in Jesus, why she reads the Bible, and what Christianity is all about.
“So I think we’re just planting seeds every time now we have a possibility to share about our faith.”
