Our ancestors greet the New Year with honey

Today ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan spoke about the food served on the New Year day table and mentioned that the dishes served on the New Year are tightly connected with the content of the fest.

The ethnographer mentioned that the bean, peas have been the main traditional dish on New Year. The dishes prepared of them have symbolized the life.

“The symbols of life and eternity used to be on the table before,” Hranush Kharatyan mentioned and said that it has not been accepted to put meat on the table before, and it was a tradition to congratulate each other with honey in order to make the life much sweeter.

One of the accepted traditions that the ethnographer mentioned was entering the house with the right foot and not visiting people without a gift: “There were to be no empty dishes, the old clothes were to be thrown out, i.e. they were to forget the old things and enter the new year clear physically and spiritually, with clean body and atmosphere.”

H. Kharatyan mentioned also that the old Armenian New Year had no Santa Clause. It is a new thing in the New Year ceremony and can acquire changes by the time.

The eastern Armenians have started to celebrate the New Year on January 1 since the 20th century, particularly after the October Revolution.