By Dr Vinod Raturi
My birthday falls on December 25th but this time I was busy working on my soon-to-be- published book. Due to this I neither remembered the occasion nor did I even plan to celebrate it. While I was engrossed in my own world of thoughts, I received a call from one of my well-wishers who reminded me about this special day. To my amazement I got birthday wishes in bulk instead of in retail, coming in a certain order – first birthday wishes for me, then wishes for the birthday of the late Atal Cihari Vajpayee, then wishes for a happy Christmas Day and finally wishes for a shubh Tulsi Divas. Noticing the mention of Tulsi Divas, I felt perplexed for a few moments, then after some pondering I realised that nowadays the proponents of Hindu Dharma are busy in preserving the glory of Sanatan tradition. Therefore, considering Christmas and the Christmas tree to be associated with Christians, they have decided to celebrate Tulsi Divas on that very day. I had never heard of Tulsi Day before. However, the Tulsi plant has traditionally been known as an integral part of Hindu courtyards for centuries.
Anyway this entire birthday episode has tempted me to delve into the history of the Russian New Year tree, “Yolka”, which is a fir or spruce tree of the pine/cedar species found in the forests of Russia. This tree has travelled a long way to occupy the central stage in Russian New Year celebrations. The history of this tradition is linked to pagan rituals, Tsars, Tsarinas and the cultural ideology of Soviet rule.
The Christmas tree took a complex journey through pagan traditions and cultural practices in many parts of Europe before arriving in pre-soviet Russia. The ancestor of this tree is mentioned in ancient traditions as the “Tree of Life”, which was decorated with ribbons and candles as a part of winter festivity. Later, in the reign of Tsar Peter the Great, Russia went through a forced westernisation, introducing European social and cultural practices. Tsar Peter replaced the Byzantine Calendar with the Julian Calendar in 1700, starting the year from January 1st (birth of Christ) instead of September 1st (creation of the world). He also ordered that the country’s streets and churches be decorated with branches of fir, birch and juniper trees. Gradually this tradition evolved with various modifications, until decorated trees were regularly found in front of churches.
Later in the 19th century, Alexandra Fuodorovna, the Prussian wife of Tsar Nikolas 1st brought many cultural traditions of Germanic people from her native land to Russia, most notably the Christmas tree which led to the beginning of Christmas celebration in Russia. When Empress Alexandra first time brought a Christmas tree from her maternal home in Darmstadt to Russia, she distributed gifts to children from both wealthy and poor families. Consequently, by the end of eighteenth century, it became a common practice to decorate the Yolka tree and leave gifts for children beneath it during Christmas, which had become the country’s main holiday. There were two important characters in making this occasion successful. These were the most cherished figures of Dedya Moroz (the Grandfather Frost) and his grand-daughter Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) equivalent to the western Santa Claus and his Elf. They are thought to travel through the wintry landscape of North-West Russia, delivering the gifts under Yolka tree while children sleep.
But after the First World War, the state sanctioned the Christmas celebration due to the conflict with Germany as Christmas had Germanic roots. Further, after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, atheism had been adopted as a state policy that aimed to dismantle the church and ban religious activities. A campaign was started to expose the folly of people in celebrating religious holidays. So, Dedya Moroz was exposed as a collaborator with the church and the rich peasants called Kulaks. The Bolsheviks saw Christmas as a bourgeoisie remnant and an obstacle to communist ideology, so it disappeared from public life, turning January 1st into a normal working day. In this way soviet citizens were deprived of the company of Yolka, Ded Moroz and Snegurochka.
In the mid-930s the Soviet Union suffered a severe famine and a general gloom pervaded across the country. In such an environment, the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Josef Stalin, wanted to uplift the spirits of the people and cheer them through some festive event. The party officials advised him to restart New Year celebrations on the lines of Christmas, detaching it from religious connotations. Hence the attractive elements of Christmas were redefined as per the communist ideology. Consequently, January 1st was declared as a national holiday and The New Year Eve got the status of a prime festival to be celebrated with great enthusiasm. The forgotten Yolka made a comeback when Stalin was convinced by his party comrades that on the New Year Yolka tree could be utilised as a symbol of happiness and prosperity of soviet children, creating a secular atmosphere. So the Yolka was reinstalled, decorated with rockets, cosmonaut toys and on its top hung a Red Star, a symbol of communist power. Since then the New Year Yolka has been a symbol of hope for the coming year, a medium of community revelry, defying religious and cultural differences.
Since I had the opportunity to witness the last phase of Soviet rule and, further, the transition period, I fondly recollect and relish the New Year festivity which was celebrated and cherished across the country in every republic of different ethnicity with the same practices. Even today in Muslim nations of Central Asia alongside the ancient spring festival of Nowruz, the New Year celebration is popular with strong soviet traditions. It is pertinent to note that the Christmas holiday itself was not the focus of Soviet sanctions, it was simply replaced by the secular New Year celebration, which adopted many Christian customs in different forms. This anti-religious policy was a key part of the Soviet Cultural Revolution officially lasting for decades until the dismantling of the USSR. However, in ex- Soviet territory, the New Year still is not just another holiday; it is the most significant and widely celebrated occasion, surpassing even Christmas and other religious festivals in scale. The soviet decision of banning religious holidays and making New Year an alternative secular celebration has left a lasting impact, making New Year’s Eve the focal point of cultural life in Russia and the ex-Soviet Union. And till today the New Year Tree or “Novogodnaya Yolka” is the central figure of the celebration.
(The author is a geopolitical analyst, and analyst, and an alumnus of School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi, and Moscow State University, Russia.)
