Soviet New Year Celebration: Origin of the Modern Ritual
New Year is the favourite holiday of my childhood (I was born in 1963) as well as of my parents'
childhood (born in 1930). My Granny's holiday signs are the night scents of Easter cakes being baked.
My parents never spoke about Easter: these were days of Granny's unquestionable cares. For children
and parents, the major holidays were birthdays and the New Year which was a holiday celebrated by
everyone. New Year had some mystery about it. Both children and grown-ups witnessed the miracle of
the break-up of the natural order of life: the nearest future divided into two parts, one being the preNew Year period and the other one the post-New Year one. The second period was far less definite than
the first one for it was so much shadowed by the New Year's Eve, like it could substantially influence the
future following it. "When I was a little girl, I loved New Year best of all... It is such a special holiday: the
old has finished and the new has started" (from an interview).
So we will speak about the construction of this Soviet New Year miracle.
The Russian pagan ritualism of the Svyatki period (judging by the 19th/20th century ethnographic data)
was composed of the two main ritual themes.
The first one is a commemoration theme and it manifested itself in certain magical activities aimed at
the contact with "the parents" - the deceased ancestors of the family. On Christmas Eve hostesses
organised dinners for them, inviting them to treat the festive lenten kutia (Christmas pudding). At the
same time - on Christmas Eve - carollers went round the houses playing the coming of "the parents"
(Vinogradova G. S. Winter Calendar-Ritual Poetry of the Slavs. Moscow, 1982). During the Christmas Eve
hostesses went out to summon the Frost: "Dear Frost, dear Frost, please come in to taste some kutia!";
in other locations ancestors were summoned the same way for kutia: "Dear parents, please come in to
taste some kutia!" This holiday was also called Dedy (Grandparents). Dedy are the ancestors' spirits.
The second ritual theme is the games and rituals of unmarried young people. Young girls' spiritualistic
experiences were devoted at that time to summoning evil spirits (at night in an "impure" place such as a
bathhouse, a crossroad or a barn). Young lads' sacral experiences were guising and playing the devil (by
using foul language, being aggressive, changing their voices). The game of "Sidor and Dzyud" can serve
as an example of combining the both themes. Two people play humpbacked old men holding a rod with
a bowknot upon it (a phallic symbol - compare to the required attribute of the modern Father Frost).
They are brought into the house sitting on a bench, with their backs turned to each other.
Then "zhanikh", a marriageable young man, one of those present, comes to them and says, by beating
one of the old men on the hump:
"Dzyud, I wanna marry!"
"It's not my business, go to Sidor."
Then the lad approaches the second "humpback" who asks the name - and the lad names any girl who
is present at the party.
"Well, she's a good gal, yet there is a blame on her."
Then Sidor started to utter hulinkas (blaming utterances), both the traditional ones and just composed.
Any indecencies were permitted to be said about any of the girls (Boytsova L. L., Bondar N. K. "Sidor and
Dzyud", Guisers' Svyatki Performance // Spectacular Forms of Folk Culture. St. Petersburg, 1990. P. 192 196; see also: Sheyn P. V. Materials for Studies of the Everyday Life and Language of the Russian
Inhabitants of North-West Russia. Vol. 1. Part 2. St. Petersburg, 1890; Zelenin D. K. The Folk Custom of
"Warming up the Dead" // The Collection of Works of Kharkov Historical and Philological Society. 1909.
Vol. 8).
N. S. Preobrazhensky wrote that, according to the beliefs of the Vologda Governorate peasants, "until
the Baptising, evil spirits are free to play pranks on earth and confuse the Orthodox Christians"
(Preobrazhensky N. Bathhouse, Game and Hearing on January 6 // Sovremennik, 1864. Vol. 10. P. 518).
A guiser represented such a spirit "in flesh" by acting in its person and from its name. Guisers put on
torn clothes and disguised their faces in order not to be recognised. "Old men" and "old women" were
the common Svyatki masks. In the 19th century Russian village, pagan entertainments coincided with
the Svyatki period that came after Christmas (December 25) and, taking also the new year period (which
was usually called Vasily's Day following the corresponding church holiday or its eve, Vasily's Eve), lasted
until the Theophany (January 19).
The New Year tree as an element of New Year celebration was introduced by Peter the Great: according
to the tsar's order as of December 20, 1699, it was prescribed to start the new chronology not from the
creation of the world but from the year when Jesus Christ was born and the new year day was shifted
from September 1 January 1. Until the 17th century, the new year day celebrated in September had
already formed into a custom manifesting itself in the order of "seeing the year off". It was celebrated
off-church, in the nature, before the liturgy on September 1. Up to the late 17th century thirty thousand
people gathered together in Moscow to take part in this prayer service at the Ivanovskaya Square in the
Kremlin (Mogilevtsev G. Russian New Year Celebration // Zhurnal Moskovskoy Patriarkhii. 1995. No. 10.
P. 74 - 76). The Western custom of celebrating the New Year had also been revived. It was ordered to
launch rockets, set lights on and "decorate houses by pines, fir trees and junipers as well as their
branches" (Ustryalov N. G. The History of Peter the Great's Reign. St. Petersburg, 1983. Vol. 3. P. 496).
The secular New Year celebration found itself included into the Orthodox Svyatki period, that not
running counter either to the common rules nor to Orthodox traditions. Before Peter's order, it was
celebrated during the Holy Mother's holidays (after the Dormition Lent, between the Dormition and the
Nativity of the Theotokos); now it was celebrated during the Saviour's holidays: between Christmas and
the Theophany. In the course of the 17th century indoor conifer decorations were a "European" detail
of royal Christmas masquerades and the New Year was nothing special in the succession of other
Christmastide holidays.
Even in the 1830s a fir tree - "a Christmas tree" - was looked on as an attribute of St.Petersburg
Germans' life. "A fir tree has become popular in places where foreigners live, especially in the capital
city... For New Year celebration, a fir tree is usually chosen - and it has given name to this childhood
celebration in Russia (yolka is literally "a fir tree celebration" - the translator's note). The fir tree is
decorated with children's toys which they are given after the entertainment session" (Tereshchenko A.
Russian Everyday Life. Vol. 7).
The spreading of the fir tree as a required element of the Christmas holiday took place in the late 1830s
- early 1940s, at the same time with the growing popularity of the German Romanticism, especially of E.
T. A. Hoffmann, who had become mass readers' legacy right at that time. "The Nutcracker" and "Master
Flea" were issued before Christmas as children's illustrated gift books (Dushechkina E. V. Russian Svyatki
Tale. Leningrad, 1995. P. 151). Yet, until the late 19th century New Year tree celebrations had remained
part of family Christmastide holidays. The had neither an independent social status nor a common
established plot. The first public New Year tree celebration was held in 1852 at Ekaterinhof Railway
Terminal.
It is noteworthy that the Russian Romanticism with its particular interest towards the demonic started
with Vasily Zhukovsky's ballads "Lyudmila", 1808, and "Svetlana", 1808-1812. They were grown up in the
Russian environment, yet influenced by Schiller's and Goethe's ballads. "Dead people, ghosts, evil spirits'
tricks, moonlit murders", "the wildly passionate Lenore with her horse-riding lover's corpse" had,
according to Filipp Vigel, astonished Russian readers of the 1820s. "With his ballads", the critic goes on,
"Vasily Zhukovsky has given us new feelings and new delights. That was how Romanticism began in
Russia" (Vigel F. F. Notes. Moscow, 1892. P. 137).
At the same time the Russian "national spirit", or "the nation's spirit" (Schelling's definition), started to
be much spoken about as something deeply rooted in the pagan history of Russia. "This olden time has
never existed before, it is new olden time", says one of N. G. Pomyalovsky's characters about the
attitudes of the 1860s (Pomyalovsky N. G. Essays. Moscow - Leningrad, 1951. P. 200).
Fir tree entertainment was entering Russian holiday customs accompanied by the creation of the
mystical Russian ritual olden time image by romanticists. The Christmas fir tree was one of such
ideological innovations: it became a customary holiday element of the "enlightened" reader who had
discovered during the 1820s-1830s the "sweetness" of the Russian national tradition by reading the
translated works of German Romanticism. Let us highlight that the most well-known "custom" of such
neo-olden time was "summoning of the betrothed", a séance (as it will be defined later, by the second
half of the 19th century) described in Zhukovsky's ballad "Svetlana" and known to every contemporary
school student by a reference thereto in "Eugene Onegin": "We shall not fortune-tell with Tatiana".
Thus, in the mid-19th century, a betrothed guiser ("the Nutcracker", a prince, a shapeshifter) had
become, owing to romanticists, the demon of the Svyatki spiritualistic expectation.
Father Frost and the Snow Maiden had not originated yet. We owe the names of the demons of the
Soviet New Year, Ded Moroz (Father Frost) and Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden), to Nikolay Nekrasov
and Alexander Ostrovsky as well as to the fact that in the 1930s they obtained a residence permit in the
Soviet literature. A Soviet scientific edition devoted to the history of the Russian literature explains the
image of "Father Frost-the Red Nose" (in Nekrasov's poem of the same name) from the mythological
perspective that had no real origin in the Russian national tradition: "Village life runs so closely to nature
that the pictures of the Russian winter interpreted in the light of folk poetry and fairy tale mythology are
naturally entering the realistic texture of the poem... The image of Frost, the lord of winter born by the
ancient folk consciousness, manifests the century-old superstitions and visionary notions of mysterious
forces of nature" (Zhdanov V. V. Nikolay Nekrasov // History of the Russian Literature: In 4 Volumes.
Leningrad, 1982). We understand that the Soviet literary historian, who wrote these words between the
1970s and 1980s, like many others, has grown much accustomed to the Father Frost of the Soviet New
Year celebration and, like many others, has acknowledged his status of "the hoary Russian antiquity".
Let me repeat: in the emerging urban Christmas tree tradition (the 1830s-1850s) there is neither Father
Frost nor Snow Maiden as the required characters of the New Year celebration ritual. They do not either
exist in the common Slavonic ritual tradition.
Alexander Ostrovsky's play "The Snow Maiden" was first published in the "Vestnik Evropy" magazine
(1873, No. 9). In 1865 the volumes of Alexander Afanasyev's "The Poetic Outlook on Nature by the
Slavs" were published and enjoyed the growing popularity. All the Slavonic rites and folklore are
explained through "the meteorological myth" there (the struggle between light and dark, warmth and
cold, the sun and the thunder cloud, etc.). The second volume describes the Snow Maiden version from
the same perspective. Ostrovsky's concept of his play had largely originated from this work. Considering
the folklore sources of this image (the tale of a girl made out of snow by an old man and an old woman
and dying either at the hand of her friends or by burning in a spring fire), A. F. Lukonin notes that in his
play Ostrovsky introduces a conflict that has not existed in the folklore, "a conflict between the Frost
and the Sun, between dark and light, death and life..."
Yet, by flickering as "masks of snow" and "girls of ice" in the symbolists' poetry, the image of the Snow
Maiden does not penetrate the common Christmastide tradition as a required character. Neither we can
see her in Christmastide greeting cards, both the Christmas and New Year ones, that have become a
common Russian tradition at the turn of the century. We have not found a single pre-Revolutionary
greeting card depicting the Snow Maiden both in the Russian National Library print reproduction section
and the "Russian Greeting Cards" catalogue collection. That is a sound proof of the fact that this image
was not popular until the Soviet era. There is only one image of Father Frost out of the 88 Russian
greeting cards of the 20th century. Speaking of the cards printed in Europe, the correlation is three to
200. (see: Kombolin Yu. "Russian Greeting Cards". St. Petersburg, 1994).
The Snow Maiden is not present in any of the texts from K. Lukashevich's "School Holiday - Christmas
Celebration" ( St. Petersburg, 1915). Father Frost is mentioned by K. Lukashevich as one of the guisers.
He also appears in the poem by an unknown author as the one bringing presents to the children and
giving them to their mother that gives them out depending on the kids' behaviour (the image of Santa
Claus of the European Christmas is represented here, who is originally Saint Nicholas). K. Lukashevich
explains that the holiday of "the Christmas fir tree" must be celebrated on one of the Christmastide
days. At the beginning of the celebration children sing praise to Christ while holding a star. This bulky
215-page edition included various texts of scenes, pageants and declamation texts for a holiday. Yet, it
does not offer any Father Frost story known to us at present.
At the end of the 19th century a necessity appeared to provide proof and explanation to the Christmas
tree celebration tradition that had formed during the fifty years of that urban tradition. In 1898,
"imprimatur August 21, 1898", E. Shvidchenko's (B. Bystrov's) book "Christmas Tree Celebration: Its
Origin, Since, Meaning and Programme" was published, with a subtitle "for tutors, teachers and
parents". The author thinks that the Christmas tree celebration has originated from ancient beliefs:
Almost all peoples have always believed that plants are living beings and the souls of the deceased move
into plants after death... Sacrifices were often offered up to trees, by hanging wool, meat, bread, etc. on
them. All that was done for a spirit living in the tree (p. 13).
There is a Russian proverb: they were wed by a fir tree while evil spirits were singing nearby... (p. 14).
... Thus, we can see that many people knew the custom of lighting up candles on trees. That custom had
a religious meaning, i.e. was a pagan rite. At the same time, there is evidence that this custom was not
anyhow related to Christmastide (p. 18).
According to the author, the grounds for the Christmas tree custom origination were prepared by the
mixture of medieval notions concerning the tree of Paradise and the mentioned pagan beliefs that every
tree had a spirit within. By highlighting the secular meaning of the holiday, due to its non-Christian basis,
the author points out at the necessity to organise Christmas tree celebrations only after Christmas as an
entertainment for children: "The religious element (thank God) can be permitted not because it is a
celebration organised but because this celebration is organised during the Christmastide" (p. 34). Thus,
neither Father Frost nor the Snow Maiden are mentioned in this book devoted to Christmas tree
celebration history.
Soviet New Year Celebration
New Year greetings were officially abolished on the first Soviet new year in 1918 by newspaper debates
concerning the date on which citizens of the newly-formed state should start their year, January 1 or
October 25. The pre-revolutionary holidays were considered bourgeois and replaced with proletarian
festive performances and demonstrations which were being strenuously developed during the 1920s.
On January 30, 1918, without any substantiation or explanation, the new government issued a decree
concerning shifting to the "European calendar'. New Year was not an official holiday until 1935.
Another stage in the development of "timeless" values was marked by P. Postyshev's article published at
the end of 1935 by the "Pravda" newspaper. It was called "Let us Organise a Good New Year Celebration
for Children" and it became a decision document for the development of the Soviet New Year ritual.
In the pre-revolutionary period the bourgeoisie and its civil servants had always organised a New Year
celebration for their children. Workers' children looked at the shining New Year tree through the
windows with envy... It was obviously certain left deviators that had made infamous this entertainment
for children by labelling it as a bourgeois invention. Komsomol members and pioneer workers must be
commissioned to organise collective New Year celebrations for children. A New Year celebration must
be held everywhere, at schools, orphan homes, pioneers palaces and children's clubs! There must not be
any collective farm whose administration, together with Komsomol members, did not organise a New
Year celebration for their kids (Postyshev P. Let us Organise a Good New Year Celebration for Children //
Pravda. 1935. December 28).
A New Year celebration was established at the governmental level as an event for social children's
institutions. Since everything was to follow a certain pattern, the new tradition was formed just in a few
months. In 1936 and 1937, under the surveillance of the People's Committee for Education, the
Uchpedgiz Publishing House published the collections of articles called "New Year Celebration" that
were to explicate the practice of New Year celebration organisation for children of different ages with
specific reference.
The first edition (1936) was opened by the reprinted Postyshev's article and Bonch-Bruevich's short
story "Vladimir Ilyich at the New Year Party": "Vladimir Ilyich loved children very much. In this collection
of stories devoted to New Year celebration...", etc. E. A. Flerina studies the first New Year celebration
experience of the USSR children in detail:
Comrade Postyshev's article about New Year celebration has been published in the "Pravda". On
December 31, dozens of thousands of fir trees lit up with multicolour lights throughout the whole Soviet
Union... The sudden appearance of the fir tree for celebration, the sweeping organisation of the
celebration have arisen quite a number of questions: about the significance thereof for our kids...
whether we should involve guisers and of what kind they should be, whether it can be a father-frost...
whether presents are needed.
New Year celebration under a fir tree is a winter holiday, for a pre-school child these are abstract
subjects, so there is no need to explain. If out of a million children there will be one who will ask: "why a
fir tree?", "what is a fir tree for?", we can explain it like this: "We see the new year in and want it to be
happy, etc. The fir tree's mass character and commonness as well as the fact that children like it make
New Year celebration a traditional children's holiday, so we may expect no bewilderment from kids...
The fir tree is a pure specimen of a season's holiday, of winter, of New Year. It is a feast of beauty and
happiness for all ages.
You remember the fir tree for life. Being a fairy tale wondrous creature, it deeply touches the child and
is rich source for imagination... It is quite enough, I think. Those who feel the fir tree and the New Year
celebration need no explanation of its meaning (Flerina E. A. New Year Tree and New Year Celebration in
Kindergartens // New Year Celebration: A Collection of Articles Devoted to Organising a New Year
Celebration (Approved by the RFSR People's Committee for Education). Moscow, 1936. P. 10 - 11).
That is how the meaning of Soviet New Year celebration under a fir tree was substantiated for the first
and the last time. It is a social event, not a family one, for pre-schoolers, pioneers, Komsomol members.
It is a lifelong memory, a "seasonal" feast of joy and beauty. All the later publications devoted to New
Year celebration will repeat this formula: "a traditional feast of joy and beauty".
It is noteworthy to say how the celebration scenario was developing: "We'd rather recommend that
guisers not be introduced at the beginning of the celebration. Let the children examine the New Year
tree first... One or two guisers may be introduced when it is time to give out presents or if a game is to
be organised. Guising as a father-frost was an interesting procedure, yet the children had not known this
character before and were taking him for an old man from the collective farm. "it's an old man from the
collective farm and we know him", the kids said. This year, however, the fairy tale image of a fatherfrost will be perceived otherwise, we think. In any case, both the little ones and the big ones have
welcomed him heartily" (Ibid. P. 16). Children of the 1930s are, as we can see, unfamiliar with the Father
Frost figure. Cultural workers for the masses know him as only one of guisers' masks that was tried on
among the others when developing a New Year celebration scenario.
At the same time and in the same articles the aesthetics and ideology of "the New Year miracle" are
being formed. This is an aesthetics of illusions, deceit and substitution: "The New Year tree is dreamlike.
It contains things that have never existed. Nuts of gold, apples of marzipan, a trunk... not with
naphthalened fur coats but full of chocolate flatbreads. Cold snow made of warm cotton wool...
Everything existing around the child, only made of other material and colour, can be hung on a fir tree"
(Ulitskaya M. The Fir Tree's Holiday // Ibid. P. 22-24).
Father Frost and the Snow Maiden were first mentioned together as part of the range of New Year tree
decorations, in that very article by Ulitskaya: "And what wonderful toys are hanging on the fir tree: a
father-frost, a snow maiden, a leshy, shining goldfish and cockerels, bumblebees and flies..." (Ibid. P.
25).
The second edition of "New Year Celebration" corrects and specifies the New Year ritual, upon analysing
the shortcomings of the previous year events. Thus, it is noted as follows: "A father-frost holding a stick
made a solemn appearance among groups of 3- and 4-year-old children. He started singing a song "Is it
the wind above the forest raging?" (from Nekrasov) - and six kids broke into tears. And in spite of the
fact that the tutor has stripped the father-frost off his beard and moustache the children did not
approach her: nobody wanted to take a present. The same fact was observed in other kindergartens.
These facts teach us to use a careful approach to little ones. Guisers may frighten them if they personify
nether a familiar nor a cheerful character" (New Year Celebration. A Collection of Articles and Other
Materials / Ed. by S. S. Bazykin and E. A. Flerina. Moscow, 1937. P. 7-8).
The general outline of the ritual is being constructed of the descriptions of "successful plots": dancing
round and circling the fir tree in costumes, including national ones, Father Frost's solemn entering in a
sleigh, or a sudden appearance of Petrushka, or of a sleighing snowman, or some little hares.
Various characters were cast for the role of present-givers and only one of them is successful: "Fatherfrost was most delightful... No other character has ever been so vivid" (Ibid. P. 14).
Thus the infamous 1937 must be held for Father Frost's birth year as well as for the birth year of the
Soviet New Year ritual. There are evident Stalin features in the image of the Soviet Father Frost (see:
Zolotonosov M. Searching for the "Seventh Field" // Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie. 1994. No. 6), yet
Father Frost's cult proved to be stronger than Stalin's one: the former was spirit; the latter - just flesh. It
was in 1937 that Soviet children met Father Frost and the Snow Maiden in the House of the Unions in
Moscow. Let us give a description of this grand ideological event. It is in it that I first recognise the New
Year celebrations I visited when I was a child.
New Year celebrations were held in the House of the Unions every day. For children aged 8 to 12 - from
midday to 6 p.m.; for those aged 12 to 14 - from 6 to 10 p.m. Each session was visited by 1000 - 1200
children. They spent some time in decorated halls. "The first hall is decorated with flowers; chairs are
standing by the walls and there is a big panel picture of Stalin surrounded by children." "The darkness of
the Hall of Columns has intrigued everybody. Two blazing fires were lit at the forestage and the figure of
a father-frost dressed in white could be seen rising. He wore a long white beard and had a crossbody
bag. The father frost greets the kids... and suggests they should cry out loud: "Let the fir tree light up!"
The children cry it out altogether and all of a sudden the fir tree lights up with multicolour lights". In the
variation of the performance for junior schoolchildren: "Children are let in to the Hall of Columns in the
half-dark. The fir tree lights up and a father-frost is rising up on the stage in front of the children... He is
not alone any longer, for a snow maiden is standing next to him. She is a naughty little girl interfering
with his conversation with the children and giving out his secrets to them. This creates great intimacy
between the father-frost and the schoolchildren" (Ovchinnikova E. New Year Celebration at the House
of the Unions" / Ibid. P. 16-28). That was how the New Year snow maiden appeared. Twenty years after
she became an obligatory character of a New Year performance:
Children in classrooms
Are talking and gossiping:
Who will be the Snow Maiden
At the New Year show?
(A. Barto // The "Pravda". January 1, 1956)
The same edition consolidates the Father Frost iconography: page 29 contains three approved
variations. All of them are well-known to us due to "old-age", as we have always thought, cottonwool
father-frosts fir tree were decorated with. They have been treasured by families and put under the fir
tree until now.
In 1940 "The Repertoire Bulletin" issued by the Chief Directorate for Entertainment and Repertoire
Control approved for production the New Year performance called "Under the Fir Tree" (V. Panova's
script): "Children are reeling round a brightly decorated fir tree. Toys are coming to life and having fun
together with the kids. Father frost is telling them how hard it was for the little Ukrainians and
Byelorussians to live under the oppression of Polish lords" (The Repertoire Bulletin: Theatre, Music,
Variety Shows. Moscow, 1940. No. 1-2. P. 16).