Sailing with the Sun: The Return of Christmas

Throughout the centuries, Russian villagers have marked the winter solstice with rituals symbolizing journey, death, and rebirth. In many places, villagers carried a boat from house to house. At each house, people attached gold stars to the boat, symbolizing the sun. The decorated boat was then placed in the center of the village, where villagers gathered to dance, sing, and eat. Children wearing masks made of wood and fur represented moshi, spirits who just might have been the ancestors returning.

Although solstice celebrations continued in Russia until the 1920s – and have recently been revived among folklore enthusiasts – many of the solstice's significant rituals were appropriated by the Orthodox Church, which came to Kievan Rus in the tenth century. Rituals marking the sun's rebirth were easily adapted to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. When the Church was itself eclipsed by the aggressively atheist Soviet Union in 1917, many of the time-honored solstice and Christmas customs were again adapted to celebrate a young and explicitly secular holiday: New Year's Day.

Magic and Mummery

When Prince Vladimir accepted Christianity in 988, his first act was to cast down the idols:

[T]he prince...directed that the idols should be overthrown and that some should be cut to pieces and others burned with fire. He thus ordered that Perun [god of thunder] should be bound to a horse's tail and dragged along Borichev to the river. He appointed twelve men to beat the idol with sticks, not because he thought the wood was sensitive, but to affront the demon who had deceived man in this guise....

Leaders of the newly installed Orthodox Church immediately set about winning the hearts and minds of their flock. Nestor, who wrote the story of St. Vladimir's life, was the first chronicler to mention holiday carollers, who "sing joyous songs commemorating the birth of Christ." Pre-Christian harvest rituals involving grain, honey, and other foods were incorporated into the "Holy Supper" eaten on Christmas Eve. To this day, Orthodox believers place wheat or straw beneath the "Holy Supper" tablecloth, ostensibly to remind themselves of the manger where Christ was born.

Over the centuries, Slavic folk traditions of mummery (an evening"s entertainment which usually began with dramatic depiction of events in the life of Christ, but often degenerated into distinctly un-Christian revelry), puppetry, and sexually explicit fertility games also became an accepted part of the Christmas holidays. As might be expected, the Orthodox Church tolerated these customs, but periodically issued stern denunciations.

The Church particularly detested the holiday folk tradition of gadaniye, or fortune telling -- specifically regarding the betrothal prospects of young women. Gadaniye involves chickens, eggs, skillets, mirrors, and other objects. For example, if a young girl wanted to know whether she'll survive the coming year, she could wash a birch twig in the nearest river or well and then throw the twig into the fireplace. If the twig catches fire, she'll live a long life, but if it fails to catch, she will die. If the twig burns fitfully and unevenly, then the girl will fall ill in the coming year. Gadaniye can also be used to see the face or name of one's destined bridegroom. Practitioners of gadaniye include some of Russia's most famous literary heroines: both Natasha Rostov in War and Peace and Tatyana Larin in Yevgeny Onegin practiced gadaniye. Despite fierce prohibitions from the Orthodox Church, the custom continues.

A 1991 Church publication warned, "Modern gadaniye, although often begun as a joke, almost always causes serious damage to the soul." In the unlikely event that a person could actually foretell the future through gadaniye, the publication continued, "bear in mind that it is seldom useful for us to know the future at all."

Pomp and Circumstance

One Russian who believed in knowing the future was Peter the Great. In 1699, in yet another attempt to drag Russia kicking and screaming into the European world, Peter reformed the calendar. He decreed that Russia's New Year's Day, which had previously been celebrated in September, would fall on January 1, 1700, first day of the European year and the new century.

Peter knew his reluctant subjects well; his decree included explicit instructions about how Russians should demonstrate their "happiness" at the new holiday:

[A]fter a solemn prayer in churches and private dwellings, all major streets, homes of important people, and homes of distinguished religious and civil servants should be decorated with trees, pine, and fur branches....Poor people should put up at least one tree, or a branch on their gates or on their apartment [doors]....[W]hen Red Square is illuminated, and shooting [begins]...everyone who has a musket or any other firearm should either salute thrice or shoot several rockets or as many as he has....

A Russian civic holiday was born.

Russians were apparently even more conservative than Peter had bargained for – fir trees did not become popular New Year's decorations until the middle of the nineteenth century. By that time, growing awareness of European holiday customs (including the increasing "commercialization" of the season) meant that the Russian holidays more nearly resembled winter holidays in Europe – at least among the well-to-do.

Russian writers ranging from Gogol to Chekhov set stories and plays in the holiday season, influenced perhaps by Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and its theme of the "true meaning" of Christmas. Looking back to Russia on the eve of revolution, Boris Pasternak imagined his heroine, Lara, shooting at the wily Komarovsky at a Christmas party coincidentally attended by young Yuri Zhivago

Fire and Ice

The Soviets also brought Peter the Great's calendar in line with the Gregorian system used by the rest of Europe. Shifting the calendar created a 13-day gap between Russian dates reckoned before and after 1918. However, the remnants of the Orthodox faithful continued to celebrate religious holidays according to the old calendar. Consequently, Orthodox Christmas now falls on January 7 (December 25 by the old calendar), and Peter the Great’s "Old" New Year's Day falls on January 13.

What had once been a six-week holiday season filled with fasting and feasts, magic and reverence, was now reduced to one day – New Year's Day.

Yet, even New Year's traditions were initially ignored by the Soviets. In the first years after the Russian Revolution, public places traditionally graced by New Year's trees remained bare. Private citizens had trouble finding firewood, let alone wood for decoration. Everyone went to work on January 1.

Then the Soviet leadership apparently had second thoughts, and an official New Year's tree appeared in the Kremlin. Two characters from Russian folk legends, Grandfather Frost (Ded Moroz) and the Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), assumed places beneath the tree, handing out fruit, candy, and presents to the children of the Soviet political elite.

The children of lesser mortals, meanwhile, began to enjoy New Year's trees at schools, kindergartens, sports stadiums, and other public places. Gift giving, feasting, visiting among friends, carolling (minus the religious songs), and gadaniye now became associated with New Year's Eve. During the January school holidays, young people vacationed at hostels or rest homes. There they passed the days enjoying winter sports and the evenings toasting friendship and long life. On January 13, some even raised a toast to the "Old" New Year.

With the break-up of the Soviet Union, what was old has once again become new. Moscow city officials recently announced that they were ordering a record 260,000 New Year's trees for Moscow's street markets, up from 151,000 for 1995. City officials cited the "stabilizing standard of living" in Moscow as an indication that this year more families would buy trees than ever before.

The phrase "stabilizing standard of living" brings a gleam to the eye of Russian business owners, many of whom are anxious to get a piece of the holiday action.

In the Soviet period, Russian women scoured local markets and state stores for weeks before New Year, stocking up on scarce commodities like butter, eggs, chocolate, and champagne.

These days, though, food and good cheer are readily available to people who have money. Among the wealthy, modest gifts like perfume and electric razors, exchanged at the Soviet New Year, have long since given way to more exotic items. Some "New Russians" have even adopted the December 25 holiday of Western Christmas: Moscow newspapers now advertise "Christmas Fairy Tale" cruises in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Parents whose pockets aren't deep enough to cover a cruise can at least hire Grandfather Frost to make a house call.

New Year's has always been a family time in Russia. In an echo of the ancient solstice spirit, Russians still find "family" synonymous with "food." Working through the sunless days of late December, three generations of Russian women gather in cramped apartment kitchens to chop, knead, boil and bake mountains of holiday favorites for the family dinner on New Year's Eve. Vodka and champagne flow throughout the evening. Friends and relatives drop by or telephone one another with good wishes for the New Year.

In a new twist to an old custom, last year Russian television broadcast New Year's Eve services from Moscow's St. Daniel"s Monastery, headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church. Figuring prominently among the worshippers was Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

Despite the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia's political life, recapturing the hearts and minds of Russia's people has proved more difficult. After 70 years of official atheism, many Russians find the Christmas traditions unfamiliar and the rituals (which are performed in Old Church Slavonic, a language closer to Bulgarian than Russian) difficult to follow.

But on New Year's Day 1996, the age-old customs of feasting, singing, and telling fortunes, co-opted by the Church so many centuries ago and filtered through the religious holiday of Christmas, have once again brought Russian families together. The "death and rebirth of the sun" still makes a great excuse for a party.