TANA Ethiopian Cuisine is celebrating its one year anniversary, along with Ethiopian Christmas! Join the owners, staff family and friends of TANA at 5929 Baum Blvd in East Liberty for a buffet style meal, live music and festivities. The Tony Campbell Band will be performing from 6:30 to 10:30 pm. The buffet will be served all evening for $15.99/person and $7.99 for children under 12.
Read more about the Ethiopian Christmas Celebration!
Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian nations in the world. Ethiopia still follows the ancient Julian calendar (really more closer to the Egyptian Coptic Calendar), so Ethiopians celebrate Christmas on January 7. Christmas, called Lidet, is not the primary religious and secular festival that it has become in Western countries. It is celebrated seriously by a church service that goes on throughout the night, with people moving from one church to another.
It is a day when families attend church. Gift giving is not important. If anything, children are given new clothes so they can look their best for the day. Everyone wears their best whites made of Shemma (Cotton woven dresses and scarves). Serious observers may have been on lent prior to Christmas. Midnight mass is attended by all with service that may last up to 4 hours followed by a small meal at home to break lent. The following day is spent with festivities that include meals of Doro wot and injera among other dishes. It is not unusual to visit family members and bring a lamb, a goat or a bottle of the best home brew tej as a gift.
Timket, feast of Epiphany is the greatest festival of the year falling on the 19 January just two weeks after the Ethiopian Christmas. It is actually a three-day affair beginning on the eve of Timket with dramatic and colourful processions. The following morning the great day itself, Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist is commemorated. Since October and the end of the rains, the country has been drying up steadily. The sun blazes down from a clear blue sky and the festival of Timket always takes place in glorious weather.