Daniel is ten, and the question by which his December is governed is why the tree in his family’s house near Chicago is kept standing well past the day on which his friends at school have taken theirs down. In his house the presents are not opened on the twenty fifth. They are opened on New Year’s Eve, brought by a figure called Ded Moroz, and then, on the seventh of January, a quieter day arrives on which баба calls from Russia to say С Рождеством. Two winter holidays are kept rather than one, and the reason that they fall where they fall is a matter of two calendars and one century of history.
When is Russian Christmas
The day on which Russian Christmas is kept is the seventh of January, and the cause of the date lies in the calendar by which the Russian Orthodox Church has gone on being governed. The Gregorian calendar was taken up across the greater part of the world for the purposes of everyday life, but for its feasts the older Julian calendar was held to by the Church, and a separation of thirteen days has come to stand between the two across the twentieth and the twenty first centuries. The twenty fifth of December on the Julian calendar is therefore the day that is marked on the Gregorian calendar as the seventh of January, which is the day on which the Nativity is observed by Russians and on which баба makes her call to Daniel. The same gap is the reason for which the term Russian Orthodox Christmas is met as a separate search, since it is the Orthodox date, and not the Western one, that is being asked after.
Why New Year is the bigger Russian’s holiday
The holiday by which the season is carried in most Russian homes is not Christmas but New Year, and the reason for it is one of history. With the revolution of 1917 the public keeping of Christmas came to be suppressed by the Soviet state, by which the churches were closed and the festivities of the season were carried over onto the first of January, on which they were kept as a thing that was secular. The tree was not given up but was remade into a New Year tree, the ёлка, and the gifts were not given up but were placed in the hands of Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost, and of his granddaughter Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, by whom they were brought on New Year’s Eve and not at Christmas. It is for this reason that the presents in the house of Daniel are opened on the thirty first of December, and that the greeting by which the season is most filled is not the Christmas one but С Новым годом, said «s NOH vym GOH dam,» by which happy New Year is meant. Christmas, when it comes on the seventh, is kept by many as the quieter and the more religious of the two.
How to say Merry Christmas in Russian
Merry Christmas in Russian is given as С Рождеством, said «s razh dyest VOM,» and the fuller form, by which a card or a church is served, is С Рождеством Христовым, said «s razh dyest VOM khrees TOH vym,» in which the sense of the Nativity of Christ is held. As was the case with the birthday greeting, no word for merry is to be found within it, for what is said, word for word, is «with the Nativity,» and the wish is taken from the form itself. When the call of his grandmother is answered by Daniel on the seventh, these are the two words by which he is expected to answer, and beside them the New Year greeting С Новым годом is the one by which the week before will have been marked. The two are not to be exchanged for each other, since the one is held to the first of January and the other to the seventh.
How to say cheers in Russian
At the New Year table, where a glass is raised by the adults and a glass of something else is raised by Daniel, the words that are reached for are За здоровье, said «za zda ROH vye,» which mean to health and stand as the nearest thing that Russian holds to cheers. A correction is worth the making here, since the phrase На здоровье, which is met so often in English films as a Russian toast, is not one. It is the thing that is said in answer to a thank you for a meal, closer to you are welcome, and the toast is the other one, За здоровье, in which За carries the sense of to while На does not. A shorter form that is heard among friends is Будем, said «BOO dyem,» by which let us be is meant, and a glass in Russia is not generally drunk from until something has been said over it, even where that something is only the single word.
Where a child picks up the words of the season
The greetings of the season are held more easily by a child when they are tied to the day on which they are used than when they are learned from a list. At our school the groups are kept small, a couple of meetings are held each week, and the words of the calendar, among them С Рождеством and С Новым годом, are met in the seasons to which they belong. The first two lessons are given free and come one after the other. The child is met first by a methodologist, by whom the level at which the child stands is found, and after that a full group lesson is taken with a teacher, so that the greeting a child gives a grandmother on the seventh of January is one that has been used before rather than one that is read for the first time off a screen.
