December 26, 2013

Happy New Year!


Happy New Year!

If you’re an American in Russia in December, your surroundings may feel eerily familiar: people put decorated trees up in their homes, stress out about buying presents, plan for good times with family and friends… But then December 25 comes and goes, and yet nothing seems to change. What gives?

As a matter of fact, the big winter holiday for Russians is New Year’s Eve, not Christmas. Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7, and is fully and truly a religious holiday. New Year’s Eve, on the other hand, has all the familiar trappings of Christmas, but with nothing religious about it. Who’s behind this? Those atheist communists, right?

Sure, the Bolsheviks eliminated Christmas as a holiday, banning its celebration in 1929. They were also responsible for the strange order of the holidays: when they switched the country over to the Gregorian calendar, suddenly all the church holidays (which were and still are timed to the Julian calendar) were shifted with respect to civil holidays. This suited the Bolsheviks just fine, as it undermined the stability of the church. When all was said and done, New Year’s remained as the only winter holiday.

Thus Peter decreed: here there is to be a tree.

But for New Year’s to remain, it had to first be introduced. As with several other important changes in Russian society, this, too, originated with Peter the Great.

In the distant past, Russians celebrated the New Year in September, as ordained by the Orthodox Church; years were counted from Genesis. After his travels in Europe, Peter decreed that – contrary to popular belief – “the currently passing year is the 1699th since the birth of Christ, and on the next January 1, the new 1700th year will come, as will a new century.” Thus Russia joined the rest of Europe, just in time for the eighteenth century.

To put it bluntly, Peter was all about keeping up with the Joneses – the other European countries. He wanted the Russian New Year to be no worse than theirs, and so his decree included specific instructions for decorating the city: people with the means were required to put up “some decorations of pine and juniper branches or trees,” while “meager” people had to at least put some kind of branch or twig by their gates. These decorations were then dressed up with nuts, fruits, and vegetables – but Russians continued to look to their Western neighbors, and by the nineteenth century they adopted more familiar traditions of decorating holiday trees.

A modern variation on Peter's "branches" idea.

But in the end, New Year’s still owes its current popularity to the Bolsheviks, even if its conception and secularism came from Peter. Along with Christmas, they banned the celebration and decorations of New Year’s, as belonging to the old order. And yet, starting in 1935, some of its features came back in “trees” (in Russian, the word can refer to both the tree itself and the associated party), organized for children as a holiday for the “joyful and happy childhood one can have in our country.”

And we know who to thank for that...
(Thank you to dear Stalin for our happy childhood!)

P.S. All the calendar-shifting left Russians with one extra holiday: Old New Year’s, celebrated on January 13, thirteen days after everyone else’s New Year. As much as it may sound like a contradiction, it still carries a share of the original holiday’s cheer, and marks the close of Russia's two-week-long holiday.

 

For more, see russianelka.ru [ru].

Image credit: Eugenia Sokolskaya, sovmusic.ru

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Turgenev Bilingual

Turgenev Bilingual

A sampling of Ivan Turgenev's masterful short stories, plays, novellas and novels. Bilingual, with English and accented Russian texts running side by side on adjoining pages.
The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

The Little Humpbacked Horse (bilingual)

A beloved Russian classic about a resourceful Russian peasant, Vanya, and his miracle-working horse, who together undergo various trials, exploits and adventures at the whim of a laughable tsar, told in rich, narrative poetry.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

Life Stories: Original Fiction By Russian Authors

The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.
At the Circus (bilingual)

At the Circus (bilingual)

This wonderful novella by Alexander Kuprin tells the story of the wrestler Arbuzov and his battle against a renowned American wrestler. Rich in detail and characterization, At the Circus brims with excitement and life. You can smell the sawdust in the big top, see the vivid and colorful characters, sense the tension build as Arbuzov readies to face off against the American.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955