I live for tradition, customs, ancestral wisdom, for age-old practices, sacred inheritances, timeless tales, crafted celebrations.

I cherish the whispers of the past.

Whispers that link me to a rich cultural tapestry of memory, to chapters behind me, to folklore, to mythology, to grandma’s stories.

“Souvenirs of heritage” I call them.

I am a woman of rituals, of ceremonies, sacred practices, of customs, symbolic acts, ancestral ways, time-honored tales.

They are my psychological medicine, anchors to calm my restless thoughts, my lifebuoys, healing broths.

I am a custodian of legacy rituals. 

I cherish their magic and strive to pass them forward. 

To add an extra dash of fairydust, I even “self-design” and “adopt” rituals. 

They are my stagecrafts, a way to create my own theatrical universe. 

I live for fairy dust.

The spark that ignites every ritual is a deep need at times of despair, uncertainty, triumphs, trials, when I need to laugh, mourn, reflect, relax…

 

…Especially when my world stands at the edge of change. When dusk meets dawn, and old gives way to the new.

Birthdays, new year, holidays, any opportunity to savor memories of the past, pleasures to come, small glorious moments and all the in-betweens.

 

Who can resist the allure of marking life’s grandest milestones with the sparkle of rituals? 

 

Beyond all treasures, my heart clings to New Year’s customs. – little spells of magic I would never dare to break.

As the clock chimes midnight, the old year sighs its final breath, a new chapter unfurls the first page of an unwritten tale, I begin to weave my cherished rituals…

365 days of infinite possibilites….Sparkle of magic.

As soon as the celestial bells twinkle midnight, I race outside, a ripe pomegranate in my hands.
With a swift motion, I hurl it to the ground in my alleyway.

It shatters like a spell unbound.

The tiny crimson seeds scatter like rubies.

A fruit of ancient lore, pomegranates I believe, hold gifts of  fortune, abundance, and boundless prosperity.

I pray for a year ahead rich with wonder as fate’s hand guides my path. 

When the moon trades places with the sun, my hallowed haven is “Ayın Biri Kilisesi”.

Literally translates to “Church of the First of the Month”.

A tiny little church in the back alleys of a commercial complex, reshaping itself into a hub for the arts -it is only open on the first day of each month.

Hence the name. 

Legend has it that prayers whispered within its walls take flight. 

Of all the days in the year, I merely step through its doors at the break of dawn on the opening page of the calendar. 

Early in the morning, when the light feels the strongest.

I walk into what I feel is a sanctuary.

There’ll be visitors at the entrance offering sweets and chocolates – believers whose prayers have been answered.  They pass on their fortunes to complete strangers via sweet offerings.

Spellbinding.

I trade my coins for three treasures at the entrance – a key, a candle, a tiny plastic bottle – my trio of wonders for three separate stories.

Gliding the keys across the frames of sacred icons to unlock the doors to infinite possibilities, to fortune, to luck, to health.

Lighting a candle to whisper my wishes to the heavens.

Filling the tiny bottle with water from the holy spring at the basement of the church so that I carry the magic home with me.

When I step out my energy is charged. My heart brims with hope. My soul alight with the promise of new beginnings. 

The afternoon of the first day of the year is reserved for a special stroll across storybook lands.

After stumbling upon a most enchanting tale nestled within the pages of a cookbook, I very recently embraced a fable for the year’s first breath.  One as bright as a penny from the fairy’s purse.

Takuhi Tovmasyan spiced up cherished recipes of her lineage in a cookbook titled “Sofranız Şen Olsun” (May Your Table Be Merry).

She apparently grew up listening to stories of her ancestors.

With the same devotion, she evidently penned her book, determined to let more people discover the magic of  traditional dishes along with stories lost to mists of time. 

“What scholars call oral history, we lived at our family table. We owe this to my dear grandmother Takuhi and my father,” she says, recalling the warmth of shared meals and tales passed from generation to generation.

Thus, a recipe, a story, long forgotten, “Kuşlar Kumrular Simidi” (translates to birds and doves bagels) once again found life in the pages of her cookbook.  

This is not a tradition I inherited from my family,” Tovmasyan admits, her “pen voice” carrying the weight of both loss and discovery. “It is something I stumbled upon in books, whispered from the pages of old publishers. For years, I wished to add it to my own table, to help keep it alive. Of course, weaving such a tradition back into life is no easy task—it takes patience, care, and time.”

Before time remembered where tales weaved through the fabric of history, a certain group of believers apparently baked a bagel in the shape of a bird, namely a dove.

An old non-Muslim tradition in Istanbul, the Birds and Doves Bagel (Kuşlar Kumrular Simidi) appears but once a year—on the evening of December 31st. Thought to have originated within the Greek Community, the custom is believed to have gradually spread throughout the entire city over time.

Nestled in the heart of Istanbul, the Tarihi Harbiye Fırını (Historic Harbiye Bakery) has, for nearly half a century, quietly preserved this time-honored tradition at Ergenekon Cad. No: 25, 34400 Istanbul. This storied bakery remains the last of its kind to craft these sacred rings of bread. Each ring a testament to the artistry and heritage of an age-old craft.

A symbol of abundance, this special “simit” (bagel) is more than just bread—it is a gesture of affection, shared among family, friends, and loved ones on the very first day of the year. 

One would apparently be hung in a corner of the home, an invitation for good fortune to enter, where it would remain for forty days, gathering the hopes of the household. Afterward, it found its place in a cupboard beside salt and sugar, transformed into a talisman of prosperity, a silent guardian of the family’s well-being.

Bread is not merely flour, water, and yeast.
Kneaded with faith, patience, and tradition, it becomes:
To the weary, nourishment.
To the lost, a blessing.
To the lonely, community.
To the broken, a remedy.

Bread is life itself.

The origins of this tradition remain veiled in mystery. I searched for its roots, hoping to trace its meaning, yet whispers of history offered no certain answers. And so, I chose to craft my own fable around this dove-shaped bread.

The bakery that still cradles the tradition stands not far from a dear friend’s home. Ani—my kindred spirit. Though we walk different spiritual paths, our hearts beat in harmony to shared values, bound by gliterring tales. 

Together, we carve narratives from moments—an art we hold close, a joy we endlessly cherish.

With grace Ani journeys to the bakery at 13:30 on December 31st, when the bagels are fresh off the hearth—and that’s the beginning of our tale. Each year those sesame covered dove shaped bagels are her gifts to me – gifts more precious than gold. 

Rain, snow or sunshine, I stroll to Ani’s home in Kurtuluş in the afternoon of the year’s awakening to feast on these special dove shaped rings, calling upon fortune and health to walk beside us through the 365 days ahead.  

And so begins our short New Year’s fable —a fairytale of soft crumbs, heritage, and belonging.

“Once upon a time, in a world that had begun to forget its own magic, tucked between cobblestone streets, there stood a little bakery.  It was perhaps an ordinary place to the hurried eye, but for those who peeked in closely, it whispered secrets of a sacred tradition.  Here, each year as the old made way for the new, loving hands shaped rings of golden dough in the shape of doves.  They crowned them Kuşlar Kumrular Simidi (birds and doves bagels) golden, soft circles  adorned with wings.

For within that humble hearth, bread was more than flour, water, and yeast. It was life itself—nurturing, blessing, eternal. Each loaf, round as the rising sun, bore the quiet wisdom of cycles unbroken, the circle echoing the endless turning of seasons. 

And then there were the doves—delicate wings shaped from soft, golden dough, fragile yet fierce in their silent message. They were bearers of peace, of hope, of new beginnings, fluttering not through the skies, but from hand to hand, heart to heart.

Come cold or the soft glow of winter’s sun, friends and family would gather side by side on the first day of the year, sharing bread shaped like doves—summoning fortune, health, and gentle blessings to walk with them through the 365 days ahead.

They shared more than just bread.
They shared in their blessings.
They shared in the magic of small rituals, woven with threads of friendship, hope, and quiet wonder.”

And so, the tale of Kuşlar Kumrular Simidi(Birds and Doves Bagels) lives on passed down like a treasured heirloom—etched not in stone, but in soft crumbs.                             

Kneaded into dough, baked with love, shared with precious ones with gratitude, with laughter, with hope, with blessings.

Clear as starlight, world’s magic fades when we let stories slip away.

Max Weber (1864–1920 was without a doubt prophetic.  In the “disenchantment” of the modern world, he lamented that the world was losing its soul.  Rituals once rich with meaning were being replaced by cold, calculated bureaucratic systems while the sacred rhythms of life—customs, traditions, and ceremonies—were fading away.

What was once a world of magic and wonder shifted to one of rules and routines. Humanity, Weber warned, was trading meaning for mechanisms, leaving behind a disenchanted world.

The world can lose its wonder without stories. 

That’s why, in every corner of the world, we must pass down the tales our grandmothers told—woven with starlight and stitched into the folds of time—so that neither we nor our traditions vanish into the winds of forgetting.

For remembering the past is like tending a lantern. Its light may flicker, but as long as someone shields it from the dark, it will guide the way forward.

“Let us do what we can, and for what we cannot, let us remember,” becomes the quiet motto carried from one heart to another.

And so, the journey of stories continue—carried by those who cherish their glow, held aloft like lanterns in the night.
So we do not forget.
So we do not fade.

Istanbul, Türkiye

January, 2025