This is an excerpt from our Country Director's email that he sent out to all the Volunteers giving us some background on the Georgian holidays. I found it interesting and thought you might too. Enjoy!

New Year and Christmas in Georgia

Because the Georgian Orthodox Church follows the old, Julian calendar, New Year’s Day is celebrated before Christmas in Georgia. New Year is the biggest secular holiday in Georgia, celebrated country-wide. Preparations for the New Year start at least a week before the actual day. The house is decorated with the New Year tree (Georgians call it New Year tree and not a Christmas tree) and other embellishments. One unique decorative element that Georgians are using is called Chichilaki. It is made of nut wood and usually decorated with fruits and candies for New Year. Chichilaki is more common in Western Georgia; it originates from pre-Christian times and is believed to support fertility and happiness

Great time and effort is invested into preparing a New Year Supra. More than 10 different dishes are prepared for New Year’s Eve. There are several must dishes for New Year Supra: Satsivi (which is turkey or chicken in walnut sauce), Gozinak’i (which is nuts baked in honey sauce) and Churchkhela (nuts in grape sauce). The New Year supra is laid late evening on December 31. At midnight, the President and the Patriarch of Georgia wish a happy New Year (broadcast on all TV channels), families toast to New Year and treat each other with honey or Gozinak’i. Starting from the late evening there are fireworks and firecrackers going off all over the country, reaching a peak around midnight. In the regions you may witness the families shooting guns in celebration, as well. Look out for that practice and stay away!

People here believe in the tradition of a first footer, meaning that the first guest in a new year coming to the family can bring happiness or misery. Many families make prior agreement with a neighbor or a relative, who will serve as a first footer to the family. The first footer is supposed to bring a full plate or basket of food and sweets to the family. In general, people always bring candies or chocolate bars to every place they go on a New Year’s Day and even during the first week after New Year. Georgians believe that the day after New Year is a “luck day”, which means that how you spend this day pretty much determines how you spend the whole year.

During the first week of New Year families visit one another and they visit even multiple families during a day. New Year has traditionally been a family-oriented holiday usually spent at home or at friends and relatives’ homes. Recently, a new tradition of greeting New Year in open air had been initiated. For the past few years the Tbilisi city council has organized grand events the people attend open air concerts throughout the night of New Year’s Eve.

Many families around Georgia, especially in the regions, also celebrate the old New Year on January 14. Families prepare Supra for this day, too, but not as big as for the first of January.

Christmas is the biggest religious holiday after the Easter. It is celebrated on January 7th in Georgia. Due to the fact that New Year here is celebrated before Christmas, the latter one has more a spiritual value and no secular importance.

Religious people fast 40 days prior to Christmas, which means that they are fasting during the big Supra times of New Year, too. For the reason people who are fasting until Christmas celebrate the old style New Year on the 14th of January more.

On Christmas Eve there are religious ceremonies in almost all churches. Churches are usually packed with people. The religious ceremony in the church lasts sometime before 5 am and is followed by the traditional “Alilo” in the morning. Alilo is a religious song sung on the Christmas day, so the tradition of Alilo carries the name of the song. Alilo is basically a charity event. Alilo participants go around the community and collect contributions for charity purposes. The tradition of gift-giving during Christmas or New Year is not so common in Georgia unlike America or European countries.

In Soviet times the tradition of Alilo like many other religious rituals was banned. It was restored again in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.