{"id":4172,"date":"2020-12-30T05:42:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T05:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=144586"},"modified":"2020-12-30T05:42:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T05:42:00","slug":"russian-new-year-at-the-heart-of-a-wide-tapestry-of-winter-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/30\/russian-new-year-at-the-heart-of-a-wide-tapestry-of-winter-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian New Year: At The Heart Of A Wide Tapestry Of Winter Traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"
As part of an occasional series on how the end-of-year holidays are celebrated in our broadcast region, we talked to Irina Lagunina from RFE\/RL’s Russian Service about seasonal traditions in her country.<\/em><\/p>\n Western visitors to Russia at this time of year may be surprised to discover that the locals usually refer to the seasonally decorated conifers you see everywhere as “New Year firs” or “New Year spruces.”<\/p>\n So why would they call them this when they’re commonly known as Christmas trees in many other places?<\/p>\n According to Irina Lagunina from RFE\/RL’s Russian Service, it’s largely a quirky legacy of the country’s Soviet past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “It was really weird because, after the socialist revolution, the Bolsheviks actually banned not just the festivities of the Christmas season — this wonderful season of the year — but also the Christmas tree, which was considered to be a religious symbol,” she says.<\/p>\n “They decided that, since the main ideology is atheism, the Christmas tree should be banned. And that remained up until the mid-1930s when the New Year and the Christmas tree were kind of rehabilitated.”<\/p>\n When the Christmas tree was “rehabilitated” amid much fanfare<\/a><\/strong> in 1935, the official atheist ethos of the time ensured that it would primarily be associated with New Year celebrations and its Christian connotations were jettisoned.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n