See agenda.ge top 5 Christmas and New Year's Eve long-reads

With the 2018 festive season, agenda.ge marks its fifth New Year's Eve of publishing. To mark the occasion, we have selected our top five articles and reports from our archives between 2013-2018 - have a look at Christmas and New Year stories we have been writing below.

From festive gifts you can find during the season in Georgia, to a retrospective of celebrations down the decades, we have published stories centred around the special time of the year since our launch.

One of our earliest long-reads, by Tamar Khurtsia and Anastasia Zurabishvili, offers a view back on New Year's Eve traditions from ancient times up to this day:

Georgian New Year celebration traditions from ancient to nowadays

Ethnologist Gvantsa Archvadze talks about Georgian festive season traditions while displaying items and products of traditional New Year's Eve celebration in the country. Photo: Nino Alavidze/agenda.ge.

The subject of marking festive celebrations in Georgia throughout contemporary history is also explored in our multimedia project:

New Year Celebrations in Georgia 1895-2015

During the same 2013 season, a story of Roman Catholic celebrations of Christmas in Georgia, by Lali Tsertsvadze, introduced readers to the community and its customs.

As the Catholic community is not too large in Tbilisi, nearly everyone knows each other. After the Christmas mass, Georgian Catholics have the tradition of having a Christmas dinner together in the church yard", the story reads:

Georgian Christmas tale

A miniature nativity scene at the Roman Catholic family of Zhvanias in Georgia. Photo: Nino Alavidze/agenda.ge.

During festive season in Georgia, visitors can always discover new spots for tasting local New Year's Eve food or souvenirs - agenda.ge's Genevieve Helliwell offered her take on handmade crafts and delights in her December 2015 story.

Genevieve's article goes through a number of easy-to-access locations and stores in Tbilisi that offer products, spirits and craft items for celebratory mood:

Your complete Georgian Christmas, New Year’s Eve guide

Handmade craft figures and items in one of Tbilisi's shops visited by Genevieve Helliwell for her story.

Next, a little-known story about Georgia's major contribution to European Christmas tree industry was delivered over the 2016 festive days by Lali Tsertsvadze.

In late September every year, [locals of] Georgia’s remote Racha region [...] climb 40-60 metre-tall pine trees to collect cones that are later processed to produce seeds. These seeds are then sold to mainly Danish companies, making Denmark Europe’s largest Christmas tree exporter," she reported in her piece:

With love, from Georgia to your living room

Western Georgia's Racha province provides a major share of European Christmas tree exports. Photo: Fair Trees.

Happy reading!