Enkutatash: Ethiopian New Year in Washington, and the Adey Abeba

Washington has the largest Ethiopian diaspora in the United States, concentrated along Ninth Street, in Silver Spring, in Alexandria and across the DMV. And on 11 September — Meskerem 1 in the Ethiopian calendar — that community celebrates a New Year that is, unusually, built directly around a flower.

Almost no American florist knows this. It is the clearest gap on the DC flower calendar.

What Enkutatash is

The Ethiopian calendar has thirteen months and runs seven to eight years behind the Gregorian one. New Year — Enkutatash, meaning roughly "gift of jewels" — falls on 11 September, or 12 September in the year preceding an Ethiopian leap year.

The timing is not arbitrary. It marks the end of the kiremt, the long summer rains, and the beginning of the dry season. After months of rain the highlands turn abruptly yellow with wildflowers, and Enkutatash is as much a celebration of that transition as of the calendar.

The name is traditionally connected to the Queen of Sheba's return from Jerusalem, welcomed home with jewels.

The flower

The Adey Abeba — Bidens macroptera — is a small yellow daisy, roughly eight-petalled, that carpets the Ethiopian highlands in September. It is genuinely the emblem of the holiday and it appears everywhere: in hands, in hair, on tables, in the traditional dress worn for the day.

The central custom is that girls go from house to house singing Abebayehosh — a song whose name means, roughly, "have you seen the flower?" — and give bunches of Adey Abeba, or hand-made drawings of it, to neighbours and relatives, receiving small gifts or money in return. Boys sing Hoya Hoye. It is a flower-giving tradition in the most literal sense.

Alongside it, families gather for a meal — doro wat, injera — and there is a coffee ceremony, and fresh grass is strewn on the floor.

Sourcing it in Washington: the honest answer

Bidens macroptera is not in the commercial flower trade. It is an East African highland wildflower with no cultivation for export, and you will not find it in this market at any price.

That should be said plainly rather than fudged, because offering a substitute as though it were the real thing is worse than offering it honestly. The right approach is the same one that applies to lotus at Diwali: say what it is, say what it is standing in for, and let the person decide.

What works as a substitute, in descending order of resemblance:

• Yellow daisy-form chrysanthemum or yellow marguerite daisy — closest in form and colour, widely available, long-lasting.
• Yellow gerbera — bigger and glossier than the original but unmistakably a yellow daisy.
• Solidago and craspedia — for a mass of small yellow rather than individual flowers.
• Yellow cosmos or rudbeckia in September, which are genuinely in season here at exactly the right moment and are the closest in feeling — small, simple, field-grown daisies.

September is fortunate timing: rudbeckia and yellow cosmos are at their peak on mid-Atlantic farms in the second week of September, which means a locally grown yellow daisy is both the best substitute and the easiest one. Yellow and Orange Sunrise Arrangement covers the palette, Wildflower Garden Bouquet is closer in feeling, and a bunch of simple yellow daisies can be specified through the Bloom Preference Service.

What to actually send

Keep it simple and yellow. This is not an occasion for an elaborate designed arrangement — the tradition is a child handing over a bunch of wildflowers, and the register that matches it is generous, bright and unfussy.

To a household: a substantial bunch of yellow daisies, loose or lightly tied. Sunflowers work well too and are abundant in September, though they are not the traditional flower.

To a business — and Ninth Street, Silver Spring and Alexandria have a great many Ethiopian-owned restaurants, cafés and shops — a yellow arrangement on 11 September is a gesture almost nobody outside the community makes, and it is noticed.

The card matters. Melkam Addis Amet — "Happy New Year" in Amharic — is the phrase. Written on a card by someone outside the community it lands very well.

The two related dates

Meskel, 27 September, the Finding of the True Cross, is the other major Ethiopian Orthodox festival in the same month, marked by the Demera bonfire. The Meskel daisy — again a yellow Bidens — is associated with it as well. The DC community observes it, often at Ethiopian Orthodox churches across the region.

Genna, Ethiopian Christmas, falls on 7 January.

Why it is worth doing

There is a practical business point and a better human one.

The practical point: this is a substantial community with an annual flower-centred holiday and essentially no florist in the region acknowledging it. That is an unusual situation in a market as competitive as this one.

The better point is that being remembered on your own calendar by someone who did not have to know it exists is a specific and uncommon kind of gesture. Most diaspora holidays pass in this city without any external acknowledgement at all. A bunch of yellow daisies on 11 September, with Melkam Addis Amet written on the card, is a very small effort against how it is received.

The date is 11 September. It does not move, except in leap years, when it is the 12th. Put it in the calendar.