New Year's holiday, as we know it today, is not so old, although it took a long time. When did our ancestors start their year? Why are Christmas trees decorated for the New Year? Who is Karachun? The answers to these questions are in our material.
Where is the new year counted from?
In ancient times, when human life was completely dependent on nature, milestones such as the change of seasons were celebrated. One of them was the day of the vernal equinox (according to our calendar - March 21), when the day was equal to the night. This meant the end of winter, the approaching heat and the beginning of agricultural work. It is believed that on this day in pagan Russia the New Year was celebrated, the first day of which was March 22. The tradition is still alive today - in the Maslenitsa holiday.
The tradition of Russian emperors and empresses to arrange an all-estate masquerade on the first day of the year is well known.
Since then, the “starting point” of the next year has changed more than once, most often in connection with the transition to new calendars. When Russia adopted Christianity, and the chronology began to be kept from the creation of the world, the holiday was first postponed - but not to September 1, when the year began in Byzantium (by the date of the victory of Emperor Constantine over Maxentius, hostile to Christians), but to March 1. Why, we do not know: perhaps it was a compromise with established traditions.
However, several centuries later, the New Year in Russia was nevertheless postponed to September 1. According to the most widespread version, this happened by decision of the Church Council under Ivan III, in 1492 from the birth of Christ. The new starting point was also convenient from an economic point of view: in August-September, most of the harvest was harvested - it was easier for the treasury to immediately receive annual payments from subjects, and for those, the end of the calendar year coincided with the end of the labor year. It is noteworthy that the Russian Orthodox Church has preserved the annual cycle of services to this day, which begins on September 1 and ends on August 31; The Church New Year is celebrated on September 1 (14 in the new style).
In 1700, Peter I, simultaneously with the change of chronology to the European style (not from the creation of the world, but from the Nativity of Christ), moved the beginning of the year to January 1 (January 14 in a new style) - on this day they began to celebrate a holiday in Russia, no way not associated with the peasant calendar.
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In 1918, when the Bolsheviks came to power, the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian one. The New Year continued to be celebrated on January 1, but there was also an unofficial holiday - Old New Year on the night of January 13-14.
How New Year was celebrated
We can judge about the ancient traditions of celebrating the New Year by Maslenitsa (after the adoption of Christianity, it was superimposed on the last week before Lent - Cheese).
N. A. Bogdanov. Christmas tree.
The New Year became a state and church holiday much later. Under Ivan III, a divine service was held on September 1, during which the Moscow metropolitan blessed the tsar and all the people. We celebrated the New Year the day before - as now, at night. On the last evening of the outgoing year all over Russia, relatives gathered at the house of the head of the family or the eldest in the family. They were treated to honey, raspberry mash or overseas wine - depending on the wealth of the owners. At the onset of the New Year (which in Moscow exactly at midnight heralded the Tsar Cannon's shot and the ringing of Ivan the Great), everyone hugged, kissed each other three times, wishing well and peace. Many continued to celebrate the holiday all night long, and in the morning they went to church services.
In the villages with the "autumn" new year (coinciding with the day of the Monk Simeon the Stylite), other traditions were associated. It was believed that "Indian summer" became a gift for the New Year. To leave all the hardships in the past, the villagers, in accordance with the remaining pagan beliefs, renewed the basis of the hearth - fire on Semyonov Day. After extinguishing all the fire in the house at night, in the morning it was lit by the "living" flame obtained by friction of two boards.
Under Peter I, who first celebrated the "European" New Year on January 1, 1700, the holiday became more secular (although the liturgy was not canceled). Fireworks, cannon and rifle salutes were arranged on Red Square, Muscovites were ordered to fire muskets and launch rockets near their homes. In addition, Peter ordered to decorate houses with pine, spruce and juniper branches and, as a sign of fun, be sure to congratulate each other on the New Year and the New Century. These innovations, combined with Christmas rituals (tricks of mummers, sleigh rides, midnight fortune-telling and round dances), organically fit into the ritual of meeting the holiday.
New year 1914.
Later, Russian emperors more than once "corrected" customs. There is a well-known tradition of Russian emperors and empresses on the first day of the year to arrange a "all-estate masquerade" in the palace. Under Nicholas I, more than 30 thousand people were invited to the palace, who were not going to dance, but to see the imperial family. The masquerade was accompanied by a buffet table of fruits, cakes, champagne, tea - and the servants stirred the sugar in the cups so that the guests would not take spoons with them.
However, Christmas remained the main winter holiday in Russia.
The Bolsheviks laid down new traditions of celebrating the beginning of the year. Under Vladimir Lenin, traditional Christmas trees were still arranged, but in 1929, as part of an anti-religious campaign, the celebration of Christmas was officially canceled, and the New Year became an ordinary working day. However, by the end of 1935, Joseph Stalin personally ordered to return the holiday to the people (January 1 became a day off only in 1947), but fill it with a new, Soviet content. How was it done? It's just that all Christmas symbols were declared New Year's and their religious meaning was erased as much as possible. There was even a manual for party and Komsomol cells, which gave detailed instructions on organizing the holiday.
Gradually, it acquired new traditions. To the chimes, they began to make wishes, put tangerines, a herring under a fur coat and the Soviet version of the Olivier salad on the table. The "Blue Light" (since 1962) and "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!" Became an obligatory part of the New Year's TV program. Eldar Ryazanov (since 1976). Another indispensable attribute of the New Year was the address of the head of state. The first Soviet leader to congratulate all fellow citizens was the country's official leader Mikhail Kalinin in the war of 1941.
Holiday symbols
In Russia, an oak was decorated. The New Year tree came to us from the West under Peter I (recall the branches of conifers), but this tradition was forgotten after the death of the emperor.
New Year card from the front.
At the royal court, the first Christmas tree appeared in 1819 for the future Emperor Nicholas I and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, who, being a native of Prussia, persuaded her husband to support the European tradition. For the imperial children, they began to decorate the Christmas tree annually since 1828, and at first they were small Christmas trees that were placed on the table, one for each child. Only in the 1840s. they began to put one large spruce on the floor. The tree, symbolizing the tree of paradise, was prepared for one evening - on Christmas Eve, but by the end of the 19th century. began to leave until January 1. By the way, in the villages, Christmas trees were not set even at the beginning of the 20th century - it was the master's fun.
The tradition of decorating a Christmas tree is associated with the image of a tree of paradise hung with apples. At first, ate was decorated with chocolates and dried fruits, and at the beginning of the 20th century. they were replaced by toys. Factory toys were then made of papier-mâché and thick glass. The most glamorous were German spheres made of thin glass, which appeared in the 16th century. in Saxony, but they were also very expensive: 100 rubles for one ball (then with this money you could buy three gramophones).
In the USSR, trees became not Christmas trees, but New Year trees. The symbolism has changed: instead of the eight-pointed stars of Bethlehem, the spruce trees had to be decorated with five-pointed red stars, and instead of Christmas balls, at first, figurines of tractors and combines made of colored paper hung …
New Year's party for children in the USSR.
The “ancestor” of another symbol of the New Year - Santa Claus - can be considered the Slavic lord of snow and cold, nicknamed Studenets, Treskunets, Karachun - a short old man with a long gray beard who runs through the fields and causes crackling frosts with a thud. To appease the deity, people gave him gifts: they threw cakes, pancakes and meat over the threshold.
Some believe that one of the prototypes of Santa Claus, like Santa Claus, was Saint Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia (Nicholas the Wonderworker). In his life there is an episode when the saint helped three girls, whose father, unable to collect a dowry, planned to derive income from their beauty. Upon learning of this, Nikolai, one by one, tossed them wallets with a dowry. At least, elements of the Santa Claus costume remind of Christianity: earlier he had three-fingered mittens - a symbol of three fingers, and they were white - this indicated the purity of what the Grandfather passes from his hands. The color of the sheepskin coat ranged from blue to red. Santa Claus finally “blushed” in the USSR, at the same time putting on red mittens. The same colors fell in love with his European "brother", but for purely commercial reasons:red and white Santa Claus was actively used in advertising by the Coca-Cola company.
The prototype of the Snow Maiden was the heroine of the play of the same name by Alexander Ostrovsky (1873), who revised one of the versions of the folk tale about the snow girl melted by the sun's rays. The playwright Snegurochka was the daughter of Santa Claus and Vesna-Red. Although the image of the Snow Maiden was popular even before the revolution (Christmas trees were decorated with her figurines), she became one of the main faces of the New Year during the Soviet era. In 1937, the "granddaughter of Santa Claus" appeared at the New Year's tree in the House of Unions in Moscow. A significant role in her return was played by the classics of children's literature Sergei Mikhalkov and Lev Kassil - they wrote scripts for the Kremlin Christmas trees for a long time, and the Snow Maiden was an obligatory character in them.
OLGA MENCHUKOVA