New Year in Turkey

Yeni Yil

New year´s day is celebrated in Turkey, very much like it is celebrated anywhere in the world. After all, it is yet another opportunity to have a holiday and enjoy ourselves. You can see large groups of people outside, counting down the seconds as loudly as possible during the last seconds of the year. However, there is also some opposition to new year celebrations because it is a Christian custom. New year´s day is universal as much as the calendar we use goes, so it does not make much sense to say that new year´s day celebrations are something ´Christian´. The real reason for this opposition is that people generally confuse new year´s day celebrations in Europe and US with the Christmas celebrations. People in Turkey rarely know that Christmas is actually not celebrated on December 31st - January 1st. You can try how true this statement is, if you know somebody from Turkey. I can bet they will most probably say that Christmas is on December 31st. That is why you can see people with Christmas trees on New Year´s Day, or even people eating Turkey specially on New Year´s Day (and here goes a confusion with Thanksgiving). Since the only holiday celebrated in Turkey among the long holiday season holidays in the US is New Year´s Day, everything seen in the movies for the holiday season is packed into this day. But of course, for the majority in Turkey New Year´s Day celebrations are just the joy of another fresh and hopeful year.

This is how celebrations go, but you might also want to celebrate someone´s new year in Turkish. Below are some Turkish phrases that might be helpful for your new year´s greetings... (Pharantheses are for the formal and plural versions)

Happy new year! --> Yeni yilin (yiliniz) kutlu olsun!
Happy new year! --> Mutlu yillar! (Alternative)
I wish you many more happy new years. --> Nice yillara.
I wish you happiness, luck and prosperity in the new year. --> Yeni yilda mutluluk, sans ve zenginlikler seninle (sizinle) olsun.
Happy new year, with my most sincere wishes. --> Yeni yilini (yilinizi) en içten dileklerimle kutluyorum.
I wish you the best of everything in the new year. --> Yeni yilda her seyin en iyisi seninle (sizinle) olsun.