How cold is it?

New Year’s in Kazakhstan is a blend of three American celebrations. Like Christmas, it is considered a family holiday. Everyone gathers together at home around the glowing tree, especially as the clock turns midnight, to eat, drink, open presents, and set off fireworks. At school in the week before the holiday we decorated an evergreen with lights and ornaments and had numerous New Year’s celebrations – as ritualized as any Christmas pageant in America. Father Frost came with his helper the Snow Maiden and watched as children, parents, and teachers held hands and danced around the tree singing familiar New Year’s carols. Brave children recited poetry or sang for Father Frost and were rewarded with candy or small gifts. Some danced or played games for prizes. For some reason, doing the bird dance is also quite popular at these events. Other aspects of almost every celebration included banishing some form of bad guy – usually a devil or Baba Iaga, the witch of Russian fairy tales who flies using a mortar and pestle – and welcoming the New Year in its Chinese zodiac incarnation. This year is the year of the Rat, in case you didn’t know, so when we set the table we made sure to put out nuts and cheese for him.

Can you picture this scene? Lots of little children holding hands and dancing around a giant Christmas tree. It’s like the Whos down in Whoville out of Doctor Seuss, except that these little Whos are all decked out in Halloween costumes. Apparently someone at some point suggested that New Year’s should involve a Masquerade Ball, so every year kids dress up to meet Santa. Some follow the theme and come as winter queens or harlequin jesters, but there were a good number of boys of the Batman persuasion, as well as a few bears, lions, and one spectacular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Girls use the opportunity to put on fancy dresses and wear makeup, claiming to be gypsies, Arabian princesses, and the like.

Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s are all rolled into one. It’s no wonder this is everyone’s favorite holiday.

Last year I was so new to the area that I barely participated in any of the festivities. This year I attended parties at the sports center (Father Frost burst in on rollerblades with a rifle strapped on his back, congratulating us with the holiday and claiming to have just beat O.E. Bjorndalen in the biathlon), the local theater/music hall (good music, great dancing), and a dance at the theater just before midnight. Plus plenty of host family bonding. I’ve spent the last few days eating holiday leftovers, skiing when it’s not to cold, and theoretically planning for the next term, which starts much too soon.

It is, in fact, quite cold at the moment. Colder than last year, but I was reprimanded today for saying that it was really cold out – wait till the mercury hits -50, they replied. Granted, that would be a new level of frost, but I personally think -30s in the middle of the day is pretty chilly. It’s so cold that not only do my nostrils freeze together, my eyelashes freeze shut and at one point got stuck to the fur brim of my hat (I had the hat pulled way down – that baby is the best purchase I’ve even made. My head and ears are never cold). Forget Jack Frost drawing pictures on the windows. Our doors are rimmed in thick frost --on the inside. We have to use a hairdryer on the locks to get the keys to turn in the mornings. Outside the dogs are laying low; birds are fluffed up to twice their usual size, and a short walk becomes a mad dash to warmth. It’s so cold that your legs start to ache as soon as you walk outside. It’s so cold that I frostbit my nose. It’s so cold that our super hardcore local high school ski team has to train inside and local races are cancelled. Brrrrrrrrrrr!

Hope things are warmer where you are (they must be… I don’t know anyone living in the Arctic Circle at the moment, do I?). Take care and happy, happy, happy 2008!