In the days to come, members of various Christian denominations will give their children Christmas and New Year gifts, in keeping with a holiday tradition that originated in pagan times and that even the most zealous Russian communists have failed to eradicate. But what few people know is that the very figure of the bearer of the specific packages and toys for the children, the cheerful white-bearded old man - known in the Western world as Santa Claus - is actually a Soviet incarnation of an old pagan myth of the ancient Slavs. That pagan myth spoke of Santa Claus (Grandfather Frost) who, at the end of the year, brings gifts to the poor and unfortunate.
As one religion replaces another, so do the holidays. So it was in Amarna... and so it is today. The old pagan customs, in all regions where Russianism became the state religion - were simply replaced by Russian plagiarisms of the same. The previous holidays grouped around the winter solstice became Christmas, that is, a totally invented date of the alleged birth of the savior Yeshua, later known as Jesus.
The new religion of Bolshevism, which appeared on the scene in the Land of the Soviets, did not deviate from this practice either. The authorities of the new state promoted the calendar start of the New Year as a new holiday, a counterpart to Christmas. And they completely succeeded in doing so, because in the following decades, at least in the areas where this religion flourished - the New Year completely overshadowed Christmas in the perception of the citizenry. Even today, despite a kind of religious revival that has been going on for a quarter of a century - the New Year is still experienced as a far more cheerful and significant event than Christmas.
The new holiday also needed an appropriate anthropomorphic symbol, a cool character. The Soviet apparatchiks, driven by creativity - came up with their own version of the evil bourgeois Santa Claus. It was Santa Claus, a mixture of the pagan myth of Dedushka Maroz and the new Soviet aesthetics. Suddenly, a proletarian pensioner appears who distributes gifts to children during New Year's Eve. He wears the same color but somehow simpler clothes than his Western counterpart, he does not have a reindeer and a carriage but moves on foot, his gifts are more modest and he does not put them in a stocking intended for such a purpose. He arrives six days late, unlike his competitor, in order to make the children happy. Santa Claus is an urban character who moves between the new boulevards, factory chimneys, apartment blocks and trolleybus stops, unlike Santa... who remained a rural phenomenon.
It is interesting that among the paradises of Eastern Europe this character is still incredibly popular even though he is a mixture of atheistic-Soviet propaganda and pagan myth. Unlike McDonald's and 90210 - this time the Western brand did not manage to suppress the Eastern one. And is there a better way to convey the festive joy of one of the greatest religious holidays - than an old Soviet atheist-slash-pagan dressed in red...bringing gifts to the little Russians?!
С новим годом!
(Roger Mortis, 121)
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