New Year Greetings for 1895
From a Kazakh Reader of the Kirgizskaia Stepnaia Gazeta
V.V. Sapozhnikov's photo. A Kazakh in Festive Clothes with a Golden Eagle at a Yurt from the Marka Kul Lake, Semipalatinsk Region, 1895/Library of Congress.
From the second half of the nineteenth century, newspapers and magazines began to be published in the steppe and Turkestan regions, including some in Kazakh. Some of these publications served as the voice and transmitter of official government ideology, which was first tsarist and then Soviet.
However, this period was also marked by a great surge in intellectual zeal and activity from Kazakh thinkers, which contributed to the emergence of various socio-political, literary, and satirical publications. Qalam invites you to explore snippets from Kazakh publishing culture and history, offering a glimpse into the important issues of the past.
Although New Year has become an important family holiday in Kazakhstan over the last century, the Kazakhs only began to celebrate it more widely from the mid-twentieth century, when Soviet authorities systematically promoted it as a secular replacement for the Christian Christmas. Nevertheless, Kazakhs had already started exchanging New Year greetings as early as 1895.
Or, at least, that’s what the New Year's edition of the Kirgizskaia Stepnaia Gazeta (№ 1, 1895) claimed when they published greetings from a Kazakh named Daubai. The Kazakh version of the greeting, unlike its Russian translation, begins with the words: ‘Kazakhs, allow me to congratulate you on the New Year.’ Interestingly, there is no separate mention of wives in the original greeting:
New Year Greeting
Allow me to congratulate you, sons of the steppe, on the New Year and wish you happiness and great success in all things from the depths of my heart. May Allah grant prosperity for many years, months, and days to your wives and children, and health to your livestock.
May the Creator hear your prayers, guide you on the path of truth, and protect you from the Shaitan. May the coming New Year be abundant, happy, peaceful, and fruitful. May it be so that even the humblest and poor fellow eats horse sausages, delicate meat from the horse’s neck, horse meat stuffed in intestines, kurut, drinks kumis, and has his face glistening with fat and butter.
May it be so that there are no thieves, illnesses, or misfortunes, that all people are happy and live together like brothers.
May it be so that every day brings feasts, horse races, and endless laughter and songs of the youth, echoing from morning till evening!
May the summer be rainy, the grass grow taller than a man, and all the livestock be fat and healthy.
May the New Year bring a life where you live in such a way that Allah, the prophets, saints, and your ancestors are pleased with you. Ameen.
Kazakh Daubai
Kirgizskaia Stepnaia Gazeta/From open access
The Kirgizskaia Stepnaia Gazeta (in Kazakh, Dala Uälaiatynyñ Gazetі) was a special supplement to the Akmolinsk (1888–1905), Semipalatinsk (1894–1905), and Semirechensk (1894–1901) regional gazettes. It was published in Omsk in Russian with additional content in Kazakh.
