Hello, Santa Claus: how Russians learned to celebrate the New Year
This New Year's celebration is, in a sense, an anniversary. This is a double reason for fun. 90 years ago, on December 28, 1935, a lightning—fast "rehabilitation" of popular children's parties took place in the Soviet Union - after several years of official disgrace. Izvestia recalled how it was.
A Christmas tree was born in the forest
Winter holidays in our country have been widely celebrated since the time of the first Russian emperor. In pre-Petrine Russia, Christmas was, of course, revered, but this holiday, unlike Bright Sunday, was not considered the culmination of the Orthodox calendar. The New Year was counted from September 1, celebrating it with apples, not with Christmas trees.
A mythology develops around each holiday. At the beginning of the twentieth century, children's Christmas trees became traditional. Moreover, they celebrated not only Christmas, but also the arrival of the new year. In 1903, the poem "The Christmas Tree" by Raisa Kudasheva was published in the children's magazine Malyutka:
A Christmas tree was born in the forest,
She grew up in the forest;
Winter and summer, slim,
It was green.
The blizzard sang songs to her:
"Sleep, Christmas Tree... Bye bye!"
The frost was like a snowball:
"Look, don't freeze!"
Two years later, Leonid Bekman, an agronomist and amateur musician, composed a song for his little daughter Vera based on these verses, which soon became the anthem of the Russian Christmas and New Year holidays. The collection "Vera's Songs" has gone through four editions in a few years. The song was forgotten during the First World War, but since 1936, the "Christmas Tree" has been widely distributed throughout the Union. Since then, almost all Soviet children knew this song by heart.
Disgrace and rehabilitation
The Bolsheviks fought against church traditions and, having gained a foothold in power, began to popularize secular holidays. Including a New Year's Eve celebration. Christmas trees for children were arranged in workers' clubs and schools. Lenin himself visited the children's Christmas tree in Sokolniki, and the memories of this evening formed the basis of a New Year's legend in the Soviet way. The civil war is about hunger, blood, and deprivation. There was a shortage of bread, fuel, and firewood. But on New Year's Eve, adults tried to amuse the children, saved treats for them, decorated Christmas trees...
In the late 1920s, the holiday fell into disrepute. A campaign against Christmas trees has begun in newspapers and schools. They were fighting religion, actually, but New Year's holidays were also under attack, which, for some reason, were considered difficult to separate from Christmas. Children's magazines published articles about how good it is to skate and ski instead of dancing around an elegant Christmas tree. It's better for your health and for your soul. Fairy tales have also come under attack. At that time, children's writers were recommended to entertain schoolchildren with socially useful essays about professions, geography, and mathematics.
But it didn't last long. Human nature prevailed, and the fight against fairy tales was declared a "leftist overreach." At the end of 1935, Pavel Postyshev, the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, arrived in Moscow. At a meeting with Stalin, he proposed turning the New Year's Eve into a universal Soviet children's holiday, which should be celebrated on a grand scale.
Stalin replied: "Take the initiative, come out in print with a proposal to return the Christmas tree to the children, and we will support it." On December 28, a small note by Postyshev appeared in Pravda, "Let's organize a good Christmas tree for the children for the New Year."
"Komsomol members, pioneer workers should arrange collective Christmas trees for children on New Year's Eve. In schools, orphanages, pioneer palaces, children's clubs, children's cinemas and theaters — there should be a children's Christmas tree everywhere! There should not be a single collective farm where the board, together with the Komsomol members, would not arrange a Christmas tree for their children on the eve of the New Year."
Everything was already ready to support this initiative. Komsomol members immediately took up the organization of New Year's holidays. Christmas trees began to be installed in clubs and kindergartens. A year later, at the end of December, the cities celebrated the holiday in fabulous decorations. Sergey Mikhalkov and Lev Kassil have already written a program of Christmas tree performances. After all, the holiday needed a talented, exciting fairy tale to establish itself in the hearts. And it turned out! Evil forces are trying to disrupt the New Year's holiday, but the pioneers and their friends win — and lights are lit on the Christmas tree.
The main character of the holiday was, of course, Santa Claus. He cannot be considered an analogue of the European Santa Claus, although they are similar in many ways. Our hero is the magical spirit of the winter forest. In Russian folklore, he is a stern, implacable magician. Soviet writers added a granddaughter, Snow Maiden, to Santa Claus' retinue. It was borrowed from Alexander Ostrovsky's romantic and sad fairy tale extravaganza about an icy girl who melts with love and sunlight. But the Soviet Snow Maiden is an optimist, a giggler, she is not afraid of light or heat, leads round dances with children, learns songs and helps her grandfather create New Year's magic.
Reality seemed like a continuation of a fairy tale. The four papanins and their four-legged friend, the children's favorite dog Vesely, celebrated a holiday on a drifting ice floe near the North Pole. They were congratulated and praised. National elder Mikhail Kalinin himself spoke on the radio with New Year's wishes for the polar explorers. This was the beginning of the tradition of such congratulations: the heads of state wished the compatriots a happy new year. And on children's Christmas trees, the most important character in those days was a polar explorer. In the Pillared Hall of the House of Unions, a Papaninsky tent was displayed in the most honorable place at the festive performance.
Festive lifestyle
Champagne was drunk at Christmas in the 19th century, but after the famous entertainer Garkavi in a Santa Claus costume raised a glass of sparkling wine on the stage of the columned hall of the House of Unions, this tradition became unshakable. The main festive snack in the 1930s was fried pies with meat, cabbage, and mushrooms. Then they began to pay more attention to salads. A hearty vinaigrette was considered the king of the feast. Olivier (also called stolichny) and herring under a fur coat gained considerable popularity.
Wonderful New Year's toys for children of the pre-war period were created not only in factories. They were made by fathers and grandfathers, and often by the children themselves. And in 1937, the first Soviet cartoon about the new year appeared — in black and white, but so funny and funny that even today we watch it with passion. This is not surprising: Olga Khodataeva, a true classic of the genre, created the painting. The obnoxious Wolf, who dreams of disrupting the holiday, resembles in his habits a pest fist from caricatures of that time. At the end of the picture, the mighty Santa Claus blows the Wolf off the face of the earth to fervent jazz music. By the way, in 1978, the animators created a second version of this tale.
In the pre-war years, children were already waiting for the New Year as the most important day of the year. Special New Year's Eve matinees and performances were prepared in kindergartens and schools, in which both adults and children took part.
Often in the last days of December, costume parties were held — children's carnivals, masquerades, at which children were dressed up not only as bunnies, snowflakes and bears, but also as pilots, tractor drivers, polar explorers, and red commanders. The trends of the times were felt in every event. Many people also fell in love with the heroes of foreign literature — from Little Red Riding Hood to the Musketeers.
In 1935, the New Year became primarily a children's holiday. There was not a word about celebrations for adults in Postyshev's article or in other publications from 1935-1936. But very soon it turned out that all ages are submissive to Santa Claus. The New Year's Eve celebration — at midnight — has become traditional in our country.
The author is the deputy editor—in-chief of the magazine "Historian"
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
