Why Russia's New Year Looks Like Christmas
A New Year's celebration in a kindergarten in 1963. While Christmas is the most popular day for gift-giving and merrymaking in most of the Christian world, Russia's biggest such celebration is on December 31, when Xmas traditions meet the champagne-soaked partying of New Year's Eve.
A 1912 Christmas postcard of a woman and her pint-sized tree. Christmas traditions such as the decorated tree were introduced to Russia from Europe around 200 years ago, and were gradually taken up by Russia's wealthy. But the lower classes were apparently less fond of the custom. Pravda, the Soviet propaganda mouthpiece, reported that each year workers' children "peered enviously through the window at the fir tree glittering with multicolored lights and the rich children who were merry around it."
A church near Vladimir being demolished during antireligious purges in 1930. After the atheist Soviets swept to power in 1917, Christians were persecuted, shot, or exiled, and Christmas was banned altogether. Bands of communist grinches reportedly patrolled the streets, peering through windows to make sure no festive trees were taking root in Soviet homes.
A Red Army soldier with a shaggy tree around World War II. In the 1930s, after a Soviet attempt to replace Christmas with a celebration of the Young Communist League failed to take off (surprising no one), Josef Stalin decreed that the festive trees could return -- but only to celebrate the conveniently Godless New Year's Eve.
Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), an ancient Slavic character (pictured here above a crowd of Soviet shoppers in 1963), also swiftly made a comeback, along with his lovely granddaughter and helper, Snegurochka (Snow Maiden).
Grandfather Frost jamming with a balalaika and a backup band in 1980. Soon, the Soviet New Year's Eve celebration was looking nearly identical to the Christmas of old.
A little drummer boy with a lineup of Ded Moroz figurines in a store in 1970. New Year's became particularly beloved during the Soviet period for being mostly nonpolitical, unlike the other big communist holidays that were marked with parades and Leninist slogans.
New Year's was an evening when Russians would gather with friends over tables crowded with traditional foods, exchange gifts, and raise a champagne toast to happiness and the New Year.
Children dragging their fir trees back to their apartment in 1994. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Christmas was reinstated and is solemnly marked by Orthodox believers on January 7.
Meaning that these days the partying...
...the fun...
...and the weirdness, is saved for New Year's Eve.