FEATURE

_ Down the street from where I live there
1s asmall lot in front of a vegetable store, a
concrete square that remains vacant most
of the year. Soon, however, it will be filled
with little green pine trees, trucked-in from
tree farms just outside the city, and Mus-
covites will be queuing to buy them at
about a rouble apiece.

I myself have a perfectly good artificial
One sitting in my cupboard, which I pur-
chased last year. It is Soviet-made, with
green plastic sections that screw together,
and looks passably like a pine tree. But
now I’m married, and my wife insists that
we must have a real tree because, she says,
that’s what families do at this time of the
year.

Sound familiar? Most northern peoples
have some sort of celebration around the
time of the winter solstice, and we Canadi-
ans happen to call ours Christmas. In the
Soviet Union, religious holidays were dis-
carded after 1917. In any case, in a land of
sO many diverse cultures, different brands
of Christianity, not to mention Islam and
other religions, it was deemed wiser to opt
for the appropriately secular and conve-
nient New Year as the key day to mark the
winter passage.

Soviet New Year’s celebrations may
lack the high-powered commercialism and
Pseudo-religious overtones of Canadian
Christmas, but its essence is otherwise the
same. It’s a time for friends to exchange
cards, visits, gifts and good wishes; a time
for politicians to sum up the year and
make optimistic pronouncements. Above

all, it’s a time for children, who, in the
USSR, enjoy school holidays from Dec. 30
to Jan. 10.

There are many different variations,
depending on place and family traditions,
but typically, Soviet children awake on
New Year’s morning to find little gifts
hanging by strings from the pine tree.
Blindfolded, they must try to cut them free
with scissors. It is a wild, squealy, giggly
ritual that children await with breathless
impatience.

Later in the day, kids may go in organ-
ized groups or with their families to some
local theatre, cultural club or park, where
the youngsters will feast their eyes on
“Dyed Moroz” (Grandfather Frost), the
Santa Claus-like figure from Russian
legend who also has the flowing white
beard, red robes, and a huge sack of goo-
dies.

In recent years, it has become a com-
mon practice for parents to group together
and hire a professional “Dyed Moroz” to
come to their own apartment block. He
will show up with suitable fanfare, shower
his wisdom upon the children, and per-
haps demand a poetry recital or some
other demonstration of studious behav-
iour from the kids before distributing gifts.

In what seems to be a growing number
of cases, the focus of New Year’s activities
for children is not the home, but a young
pioneer camp, a children’s palace or even a
parent’s workplace. A great many organ-
ized alternatives exist, and often par-
ents — particularly single parents — pre-

Dyed Moroz (Grandfather Frost) and the Snow Maiden, traditional figures of the
New Years celebrations in the Soviet Union, pose outside the huge four-storey
high tree erected each year outside the Kremlin Palace of Congresses.

fer to let the kids celebrate with their peers.

For adults, New Year’s eve is remarka-
bly similar to the Canadian variety except
that over the past two years, the anti-
alcohol drive has dampened the occasion

somewhat. Nevertheless, last year the
government let up a bit at holiday-time,
and there was enough vodka in the shops.
There may be again this year.

— Fred Weir

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 16, 1987 e 11