• The Holiday Season—Will It Be All You Want It to Be?
    The Watchtower—2005 | December 15

    • The Holiday Season​—Will It Be All You Want It to Be?

      “Peter [the Great] ordered special New Year’s services held in all the churches on January 1. Further, he instructed that festive evergreen branches be used to decorate the doorposts in interiors of houses, and he commanded that all citizens of Moscow should ‘display their happiness by loudly congratulating’ one another on the New Year.”​—Peter the Great—​His Life and World.

  • Christmastime—What Is Its Focus?
    The Watchtower—2005 | December 15

    • On the heels of the 1917 Bolshevik Communist revolution, Soviet authorities pursued an aggressive policy of statewide atheism. The entire Christmas holiday season with its religious overtones fell into disfavor. The State began waging a campaign against both Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. There was even open condemnation of the local symbols of the season​—the Christmas tree and Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus.

      In 1935, a change occurred that profoundly altered the way Russians marked the holiday season. The Soviets reinstated Grandfather Frost, the seasonal tree, and the New Year’s celebration​—but with a significant twist. Grandfather Frost, it was said, would bring presents, not at Christmas, but on New Year’s Day. Similarly, no longer would there be a Christmas tree. It would be a New Year’s tree! Thus, there was a major change of focus in the Soviet Union. The New Year’s celebration, in effect, supplanted Christmas.

      The Christmas season became a wholly secular festive occasion, officially bereft of any religious meaning. The New Year’s tree was decorated, not with religious ornaments, but with secular ones depicting the progress of the Soviet Union. The Russian journal Vokrug Sveta (Around the World) explains: “It is possible to retrace the history of the establishing of a Communist society by the New Year’s tree decorations of various years of the Soviet era. Along with commonplace bunnies, icicles, and round loaves of bread, decorations in the shape of sickles, hammers, and tractors were released. These were later replaced by figurines of miners and cosmonauts, oil rigs, rockets, and moon buggies.”

  • Christmastime—What Is Its Focus?
    The Watchtower—2005 | December 15

    • a Before the October 1917 revolution, Russia employed the older Julian calendar, but most countries had switched to the Gregorian calendar. In 1917 the Julian calendar was 13 days behind its Gregorian counterpart. After the revolution, the Soviets switched to the Gregorian calendar, bringing Russia into line with the rest of the world. The Orthodox Church, however, retained the Julian calendar for its celebrations, designating it the “Old Style” calendar. You may hear of Christmas in Russia being celebrated on January 7. Keep in mind, however, that January 7 on the Gregorian calendar is December 25 on the Julian calendar. Thus, many Russians organize their holiday season this way: December 25, Western Christmas; January 1, secular New Year’s; January 7, Orthodox Christmas; January 14, Old Style New Year’s.