Novruz holiday will be celebrated in Moscow at the Exhibition Center
The celebration of Novruz was the purest exotic thing in in Moscow 15-20 years ago. Now there are special preparations for Novruz holiday in the Russian capital. Indeed, representatives of 193 nations and states celebrate Novruz in Moscow at a citywide festival, and for many of them Novruz is a significant date.
Novruz-2018 holiday will be celebrated on March 25 in Moscow at the Exhibition Center, pavilion No 75, Moscow Administration reports.
The residents of Moscow will see concert of art masters and amateur creative collectives, presentation of national costumes as well as competitions in national wrestling. In addition, participants and visitors will be able to taste oriental dishes from different nations at the Plov Festival. At the same time, the administration’s office notes that cookery experts will prepare plov for the guests of the holiday.
By the way, interest in Novruz is growing year by year in Moscow. According to statistics, the pavilion of Exhibition Center gathered more than 25 thousand guests in 2016, when the Russian capital celebrated Novruz for the first time. In 2017, there were already over 37,000 visitors and guests. The organizers of the holiday believe that this year these figures will be surpassed.
The tradition of celebrating Novruz (the spring equinox) is one of the oldest festivals in the history of mankind. Historians date it back to more than three thousand years. This holiday symbolizes the end of winter and the arrival of spring, the beginning of the new agricultural cycle. After collapse of the USSR, this ancient holiday experienced a second birth. Currently in five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, as well as in Azerbaijan, Novruz is treated as an official public holiday. It gave a powerful impetus to the popularization of Novruz throughout the world. As a result, in 2009, UNESCO included Novruz in the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Moreover, in 2010, the UN General Assembly recognized March 21 as the International Day of Nowruz.
In Turkmenistan, Novruz is one of the most popular holidays in the nation. It is celebrated on March 21-22 in a picturesque place at the foothills of the Kopet Dag near Ashgabat, which is called “Nowruz ýaýlasy” (“Nowruz valley”). Here for the holiday, a Turkmen village with yurts with carpeted flooring, the traditional oriental bazaar with stalls and brisk salesmen, craft workshops and smoking kazans to prepare a great variety of national cuisine for guests will be temporarily set up.
As the participants of the festival say, with performances of folklore groups, festive folk rituals and national games, two days of Novruz pass like winking.
