Caviar at Christmas
A tale of Russian Winter
Russian Christmas isn’t what we know and expect, here in Northern Ireland. For a start, in Russia, Christmas is celebrated on 7 January. More importantly, if you were to buy a seasonal gift or card for a loved one, it wouldn’t say Merry Christmas (с рождеством) but instead Happy New Year (с новым годом).
It’s a fairly recent story why New Year replaced Christmas as the main festive celebration. The dominant religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity, a beautiful and musical branch of Christianity. The Orthodox Church still uses the Gregorian (“the old”) calendar, where the birth of Jesus is celebrated on 7 January. However, religion was severely repressed during the Soviet period, and in the thirties the State replaced Christmas with the secular celebration of the New Year.
A Christmas tree is known as the New Year tree (yolka/ёлка) here. Russian Santa is called Grandfather Frost (Ded Moroz/дед мороз) — but even he is quite different. He brings presents to children on New Year’s Eve, he doesn’t have a belly and Rudolph is replaced by Santa’s glamorous assistant and beautiful granddaughter, Snegurochka!
Religion is now a big part of Russian society and identity, even if numbers of regular church goers remain low (estimated at 4–8%). Perhaps it’s for that reason that Christmas remains a small family celebration, not unlike ours, that many celebrate with a visit to their local church and a family meal. It might be a day off from the office but many restaurants and shops stay open.
So, the real thing to look forward to during the Russian Winter is New Year. New Year is a celebration for both friends and family — and everything stops! My first experience of Russian New Year was in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Russia’s third biggest city (roughly the same population as Northern Ireland), for a few weeks over December and January. I spent New Year’s Eve drinking traditional sweet Soviet champagne on the central ice rink, watching the fireworks and the President’s annual address on the big screen, trying not to freeze in -27 degrees.
Recently, I met a couple from St Petersburg who were interested to know how we celebrated New Year in Northern Ireland, and they shared their Russian traditions with me. Forget our seasonal turkey — in Russia it’s about the feast and drinking on New Year’s Eve. Salads, meat in jelly (холодец), “herring under a fur coat”, red caviar and pancakes, with pickles on hand to make the shots go down easier. The traditional drink is a sweet and cheap Soviet Champagne, and vodka. Just like we would traditionally find an orange in our stocking, mandarins are a big part of the festive season in Russia. As another gentleman told me, “Без них — нельзя!”, which roughly translates as ‘without them, it’s nothing’!
It is one of the best times to visit, if you don’t mind the temperatures (prepare for -20 to -30 that time of year). The atmosphere is cosy and romantic — whatever the temperature — because the darkest and coldest months are accompanied by winter festivals, where ice sculptures abound, paths are lined with Christmas markets, light installations replace the water fountains and ice-rinks open in every park. Importantly for Russians, you can still buy ice-cream on the street, whatever the weather.
If you’d love to stroll along snowy streets eating ice-cream, you should come to Russia during the Winter. You could even end the season by celebrating Epiphany (крещение) in the traditional Russian way on 19 January — with three dips in a hole in the ice!
Excerpts of this story were originally published in the Ballymena and Antrim Guardian in December 2018.
