yolka Archives - Kidding Herself

Do you experience a flat sensation as soon as 25th December is over? Find yourself locked in a post-Christmas stupor of purposeless chocolate eating and soup making? Looking forward to going back to work on the 2nd January?

The solution to these problems is simple – spend New Year in Moscow.

Light tunnel New Year street decoration in Moscow

The Soviets banned Christmas along with religion, and repurposed certain Christmas traditions for 31st December. They also changed the calender, and that meant that New Year falls before Orthodox Christmas. As a result, New Year is the biggest celebration of the year in Russia.

And includes decorated trees.

Lots and lots of decorated trees.

Decorated trees in GUM Moscow for New Year

It combines not only the same private family eatathon and present giving binge every Christmas-celebrating family will recognise, but also a very public festival, which sees the Moscow streets decorated to the max.

Christmas and New Year market on Red Square Moscow

And very little of it has anything to do with enticing you into the shops to spend all of your money.

GUM and Central Childrens Store Detskiy Mir at New Year in Moscow

Well, maybe some of it.

Either way, instead of everyone lying around wondering what day it is and when the bins will be collected, the week before New Year is when peak anticipation, preparation and goodwill to all men is happening in Moscow. You know that happy feeling you get in the run up to 25th? Totally kicking off for anyone in Moscow for New Year just as you are wondering if it was all worth it.

Even if you do not get invited to someone’s house to consume more salad and champagne than you thought possible in the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve, there is always the option of getting outside and enjoying the fireworks. Firework displays take place not just next to the Kremlin or Red Square, but (this year) in over twenty parks around the capital of Russia.

They stagger it too. Some displays start at 12 midnight on the nose, and some allow you to watch the president’s address on TV, finish your dinner, bundle the kids into a whole bunch of clothes and saunter outside to catch the booms bang whee wizzzes at 1am. If you think Hogmanay is a big deal, you haven’t been in Moscow on New Year’s Eve.

Nikolskaya Ulitsa for New Year in Moscow

And the 1st to the 7th January, when Orthodox Christmas takes place, is a state sponsored holiday. This year, for example, there’s a three-day street party of even more decorations, performances, food stalls and closed streets to add to the already extensive pedestrianisation of the city centre.

There’s an ice festival; many of Moscow’s museums and art galleries will be free; you can see New Year children’s shows, called yolkas after the traditional New Year tree; meet up with the Russian Santa, Ded Moroz and his granddaughter Snegurochka; go to the Bolshoi or similar for New Year ballets such as the Nutcracker; and boggle at New Year ice skating extravaganzas in Moscow’s stadiums, featuring ice skating stars as well as outragous costumes.

You can go ice skating yourself as well – some of Moscow’s most fabulous public spaces have outdoor skating rinks set up. Including Red Square and Gorky Park.

And on Red Square there is also a Christmas/ New Year market.

There may even be snow, although sadly this is the one thing you can’t put your money on any more. It’s well above zero at the moment this year and the snow has melted.

On the upside, this means you can get some great shots for Instagram of the Moscow’s fabulous decorative New Year lights gleaming their reflections in the puddles.

Plus, you know that debate about whether to wish people a Happy Christmas or Happy Holidays? Totally a non-issue for this inclusive secular holiday. C Noviim Godom works for everyone.

Spending New Year in Moscow. You know it makes sense. Get planning.

And if you want more ideas about what to do, here is THE guide to Moscow for first time visitors.

More information

Moscow city’s official site. In English.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about celebratory meals in Russia (which Mama wrote!).

Pin for later?

29 reasons to spend New Year in Moscow. In pictures.

There are, I am finding, one or two differences between Moscow and London.

Take Christmas decorations. In London, the most interesting ones are done by the people trying to entice you into their shops to buy their wares and in Moscow, there aren’t any.

This is because in the Soviet Union, under the communists, Christmas was banned. Or at least energetically discouraged. So, in an interesting reversal of what the Christians did to the Pagan midwinter festivals, everybody celebrates New Year instead in a way which is almost entirely like the Christmases of elsewhere. Christmas trees? Are New Year trees. But otherwise largely indistinguishable. Father Christmas? Is Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), ably assisted by his granddaughter, Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden). Traditional television that everybody looks forward to? It’s no Doctor Who Christmas Special, but it exists. Family dining on an epic scale? Yes, got that, although it happens at midnight on 31st. And yes, everybody suffers through the leftovers for the next ten days too. There are even traditional sporting events the day after the big day. Swimming in ice holes mostly. Natch.

So what you are seeing when you walk around Moscow in the second half of December, are actually New Year decorations. Any insidious Christmas creep – the markets which spring up tend to be called Christmas markets, which is not surprising as they are as much of a blatant rip off of the same European phenomenon as they are in the UK – is dampened by the fact that the Orthodox celebration of the birth of Jesus is on 7th January. It’s fighting a losing battle is expecting people to delay gratification that long.

It’s not all pillaging from the West though. Mama was bemused by the sheer number of monkey themed items in all the shops this year until she remembered that Russians like to add whatever the animal from the Chinese horoscope is coming up next to their celebrations, and to hell with the fact that the respective New Years don’t line up at all and it’s a different belief system altogether.

When you receive a Christmas card from Mama with a cavorting rat, cow or dragon in a Santa hat covered in snow on the front, do not be surprised.

Of course, all this means that my Superb Big Brother and I get three separate days of being given presents, as Mama and Papa try to cover all their cultural bases in one marathon blow out. Every now and again being bi-cultural has its advantages. For us children.

Anyway.

Following the wild success of our London Christmas Window Scavenger Hunt in 2014, Mama thought it would be fun to get into the Christ… New Y… seasonal spirit by seeing what central Moscow had to offer, especially now that most of it is pedestrianised and considerably less overflowing with manic Christmas shoppers given that the centre of Moscow is mostly home to extremely high-end retail emporiums, and also given that Moscow tends to go in for bread and circuses on an epic scale for every public holiday of note.