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Tajikistan moves to restrict festive season revelry
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Tajikistan has tightened restrictions on celebrations of the traditional festive season in schools in the Central Asian country, banning Christmas trees and gift-giving.
This year’s curbs are the toughest yet implemented by the former Soviet country, which has been toning down celebrations of the New Year holiday for some time, notably banning Russia’s version of Father Christmas from television in 2013.
A decree by the education ministry prohibits “the use of fireworks, festive meals, gift-giving and raising money” for New Year celebrations as well as “the installation of a Christmas tree either living (felled wood) or artificial” in schools and universities.
While other ex-Soviet states have been busy setting up big festive trees on the main squares of major cities, a tree will only appear briefly before New Year in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe and is expected to be removed early in 2016.
The December-January holiday season is contested in Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim but secular republic.
On New Year’s night in 2011-2012, a man dressed in the red robes worn by Father Christmas and his Russian equivalent “Father Frost” was stabbed to death by unknown assailants in Dushanbe.
While the man’s family claimed the attack had religious motives, police refuted the account and said the three attackers were intoxicated at the time.
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