Kyrgyzstan: Long Holiday Season Comes to Close

This year, Bishkek's holiday season stretched for an entire month, extending from the December 8 Muslim festival of Kurbon Ait -- the Feast of the Sacrifice, known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic -- through the Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7.

With shop windows offering holiday sales and with bright strings of lights adorning government buildings, Bishkek residents could revel in a festive atmosphere that, at least for a fleeting moment, distracted attention from the looming economic uncertainty of 2009. In some towns, even anachronistic statues of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin were decked out with holiday cheer.

Most workers enjoyed an extended vacation for the holidays, and many traveled back to their respective home villages to visit relatives.

Just before New Year's, as the nightly crescendo of fireworks neared its peak in Bishkek, an army of red-garbed characters -- Father Frost in English, Ded Maroz in Russian -- wandered daily around the outsized Christmas tree standing in Ala Too Square searching for children and their parents' cameras.

Nearby -- police, their cars decked out in tinsel for the holidays, paraded in the same square. For a change, they were generally glad to be photographed.

The most widely celebrated event was New Year's Eve, a family holiday here, marked by a cacophony of fireworks from every direction and, it seemed, all the Father Frosts a child could dream of.

A week later, at midnight services on January 7, Bishkek's main Russian Orthodox Church was full of worshipers lighting candles and marking Orthodox Christmas with prayers to their patron saints.