Tsagaan Sar

Celebrated between late January and end of February according to the Mongolian lunar calendar, Tsagaan Sar, or White Moon, stands as Mongolia's most important traditional holiday, marking both the new year and the arrival of spring after the country's long, brutal winter. Families travel across vast distances to gather together, visiting relatives in strict order of seniority and offering blue silk scarves called khadag as a sign of respect.

The centrepiece of the celebration is buuz, steamed dumplings filled with minced meat and onion, which households prepare by the hundreds or even thousands in the days leading up to the festival, often stacking them into towering pyramids as a display of abundance and a symbolic wish for prosperity in the coming year. Alongside buuz, the traditional Tsagaan Sar feast includes dairy products, mutton and horse meat, rice with curds, and a striking mountain of decorative cookies stacked high on a special platter, all washed down with airag, fermented mare's milk.

For a country whose winters test genuine physical endurance, Tsagaan Sar's mountain of dumplings and mound of cookies carry real symbolic weight — a household's ability to feed its gathered family generously after months of scarcity, marking the turn toward warmer, more abundant days ahead.