National Holidays

This page hosts video collections of traditional holidays and secular celebrations. The traditional holidays are Zul, Tsagan Sar, and Ur(s) Sar, which have been celebrated by the Kalmyks for many centuries. These holidays were initially performed to mark the transition from one season to the next, from one stage to another. With the spread of Buddhism among the Kalmyks’ ancestors, these holidays incorporated Buddhist elements such as rituals associated with Buddhist deities, Buddhist cosmology, etc. By contrast, secular celebrations, which are recent inventions, are festivities that were created by the state to commemorate and celebrate various events, peoples, and ideas. For example, the Festival of Tulips was first celebrated in the early 1990s to promote the idea of harmony between humans and nature.