MOSCOW, January 1. /TASS/. Russia’s main New Year’s fir tree arrived at Moscow Kremlin’s Cathedral Square at midnight on December 12.
The 90-year-old fir was felled near the settlement of Znamenka, located not far from the town of Mozhaysk, approximately 110 km west of Moscow. The tree was chosen from over 25 ‘candidates.’ The process of carefully packing the tree and loading it onto a special truck took around two days. Several young spruce saplings will be planted at the site where the tree was cut down.
On January 1, 2025, the new year will begin. TASS has prepared this factbox with background information on the history of Russia’s traditional New Year’s celebration.
Origins of the New Year’s holiday
The first Christmas trees in Russia appeared during a period that historians often refer to as the Time of Troubles (1598-1613), which followed the Polish invasion. This tradition failed to take root then. During the reign of Peter the Great (1672-1725), conifer trees began to be set up on New Year’s Eve on Moscow’s Cathedral Square and in Merchant Yard (the then equivalent of today’s indoor shopping malls). The custom was borrowed from the Europeans that resided in Moscow’s German Quarter.
On December 29 and 30, 1699 (December 19 and 20 according to the Julian Calendar effective in those days) Peter the Great issued two decrees — one on a new system of chronology and the other, on celebrating the New Year. Under the decrees, the years were to be counted from the day of Jesus Christ’s birth and the beginning of the new year would be celebrated on January 1, in accordance with the custom adopted in European Christian countries. Before that, Russia had stuck to the Byzantine Calendar, which calculated historical time from the moment of the world’s creation (believed to have been at 5509-5508 BC). According to the Byzantine Calendar, the first day of the new year was on September 1. That said, Peter the Great decided against adopting the Gregorian Calendar, which European countries had introduced in the 16th century. Russia retained the Julian calendar.
It was ordered to decorate Moscow’s main streets and the homes of the nobility with conifer trees and branches. The New Year festivities lasted for seven days, topping the holiday off with a bonfire display lighting up Moscow’s Red Square, the site of the main events.
Spruces were put up and decorated for Christmas, December 25, and remained in place until the New Year. Originally, the trees were adorned with sweets, fruit, ribbons, and candles. Later, they were decked out with special toys, most of them associated with biblical stories: jingle bells, stars, holiday lamps and tiny figures of angels and shepherds. Presents for all members of the family were placed under the tree — an unmistakable allusion to the Gifts of the Magi. Later, toys made from glass began to be brought from Germany. At the end of the 19th century, glass baubles and Russian-manufactured beads were already available. At about the same time, the country borrowed the European custom of making artificial Christmas trees. With that, the initial ones were made from pieces of fabric.
The first Christmas tree meant for public display was placed inside St. Petersburg’s railway station in 1852. Later, trees began to be installed and decorated at other public sites.
The Christmas tree tradition was interrupted by World War I. In 1915, German prisoners of war, kept at a hospital in Saratov, arranged a Christmas party, consequently triggering enraged comments from Russian dailies. Thus, Emperor Nicholas II banned the custom of decorating trees for Christmas.
Consequences of the October Revolution
After the October Revolution of 1917, the tsarist ban was lifted, and on December 31 of that year the first public Christmas tree was put on display at the Mikhailov Military School in Petrograd (the wartime name of St. Petersburg). There was no celebration in the Moscow Kremlin, which suffered from shelling in November 1917.
In January 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) passed a decree introducing the Western European Gregorian calendar. The Russian Orthodox Church did not accept the change and continued to adhere to the traditional Julian calendar. This is why Russian Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7, which under the Julian calendar corresponds to December 25. At the same time, a new unofficial holiday emerged — the Old New Year — which is celebrated on January 14.
In the first years of the Soviet Union, the tradition of Christmas and New Year’s celebrations continued. Special New Year’s parties for the children of government and Communist Party officials were held at the Grand Kremlin Palace. However, in the mid-1920s, a campaign against religious practices was launched across the country. As a result, Christmas was banned in 1929. At the same time, there were proposals to move the New Year’s celebration from January 1 to November 7 (Day of the October Revolution). While the Soviet authorities did not take this step, Christmas celebrations were condemned as an alien “bourgeois and religious” legacy and outlawed in 1929.
Revival of the holiday
On December 28, 1935, the Pravda newspaper published an article by Pavel Postyshev, a senior Soviet politician, entitled “Let’s organize a great New Year’s tree for the kids on New Year’s Eve!”, in which the author urged an end to the “wrongful condemnation” of the holiday tree, and called on the authorities to hold collective festivities for children. On December 29, Pravda published a resolution by Alexander Kosarev, the secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (Komsomol), that on January 1 all Komsomol members and Young Pioneers (a youth organization for children and adolescents aged 9 to 14) would hold New Year’s tree celebrations at schools, children’s clubs and orphanages.
On January 1, 1936, Pravda’s front page featured a photo of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the text of his New Year’s greetings. At the same time, a New Year’s party for children and youngsters took place at the House of the Unions’ Column Hall. The party involved the key personage associated with the New Year’s holiday, Ded Moroz (or “Grandfather Frost”), who was joined by his helper Snegurochka (or the “Snow Maiden”) a year later.
On the night of January 1, 1942, the first official New Year’s greeting to all citizens of the USSR was broadcast on the radio, which was read out by the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. His speech was dedicated to the dramatic events then taking place on the combat fronts of the Great Patriotic War.
On New Year’s Eve 1944, the national anthem was performed for the first time in the USSR, the text of which was written by Sergey Mikhalkov and El-Registan (real name: Gabriyel Ureklyan), while the music was composed by Alexander Alexandrov.
Starting from 1954, New Year’s celebrations for kids and teens were held at St. George’s Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Since 1962, these events have been held in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses (now the State Kremlin Palace). The country’s best students were invited to the unveiling of the first Kremlin New Year’s tree. The event was broadcast on the radio, and detailed reports were published in newspapers. Since then, the celebration in the Kremlin has been referred to as the “main New Year’s tree of the country.” Moscow trade unions organized the event. Since the mid-1960s, the holiday has been held in the form of a festive gala performance.
In the 1970s, Soviet leaders initiated the tradition of addressing the nation on New Year’s Eve. General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev was the first to make such an address, which was aired on national TV on December 31, 1970.
In the Soviet era, the holiday’s features changed. The Star of Bethlehem was replaced by a five-pointed red star and wax candles were replaced by garlands of electric lights. Figurines depicting the Kremlin towers, cosmonauts, satellites, sheaves of wheat and other symbols were now used instead of nuts, fruits and figurines of Christmas characters.
Decorations over the decades
In the 1930s, nationwide factories began to churn out tree toys in abundance, but those delicate and fragile items, made from hot glass and painted by hand, were rather expensive. Many families demonstrated great resourcefulness in making improvised decorations from cardboard wood, color paper and painted spruce cones. Pressed cotton wool toys were extremely popular. Their mass production had continued up until the mid-1950s. On Soviet New Year’s trees, along with the traditional figures depicting animals and birds, fairytale characters, snowflakes and flowers, you could find baubles with portraits of Lenin and Stalin, toy figures of polar explorers, pioneers (the USSR’s version of the boy scouts and girl scouts) with trumpets, blimps, tanks, tractors, bundles of wheat, ears of corn, space satellites, space rockets and so on. Plastics, which began to be used widely for making New Year’s toys in the 1960s, considerably slashed production costs and, consequently, retail prices.
Festive spruce adorns Kremlin’s Cathedral Square
Right in the middle of the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square, a festive tree has been put up every year since December 1996. In 2001-2004, an artificial installation resembling a tree was used instead of a real one due to the harsh frosts. On two occasions, the trees were brought from Veliky Ustyug, the residence of Grandfather Frost, but delivering the tree in an impeccable condition from a dense forest several hundred kilometers away turned out to be a rather tricky task, so trees began to be selected near Moscow. Nowadays, the casting call for eye-catching candidates kicks off in the spring or early summer. First, images taken from space satellites and helicopters are thoroughly scrutinized. Then, a group of commissioners from the Russian presidential staff goes straight to the site to have a look at the finalists.
A tree’s attractive appearance and its ability to withstand weather changes are the main factors considered. The spruce should not have cracks, rotten parts of the trunk, partial absence of a crown, etc. That being said, the location and accessibility are just as vital. Normally, administrators opt for a spruce that grows not far from a decent road, so as to minimize potential harm to other trees and facilitate transportation. An approximate set of ‘beauty’ standards for the contenders to live up to looks like this: the spruce is supposed to be about 95 years old and 30 meters tall. In addition, its trunk at the bottom should be about 60-70 centimeters in diameter. Other essential criteria call for the tree’s perfect pyramidal shape, strait trunk, dense conifer with dark-green needles and strong branches capable of withstanding temperature fluctuations. In 2020, a 96-year-old spruce tree in the Naro-Fominsky District of the Moscow Region was chosen to be installed in the Kremlin. In 2021, the Cathedral Square of the Moscow Kremlin was decorated with a 90-year-old spruce tree from the village of Novopareevo of the Shchyolkovsky District. In 2022, a 95-year-old tree from Gryady of the Volokolamsky District was chosen as the main New Year tree in Russia. In 2023, a spruce tree was selected using satellite images in the Shchyolkovsky District of the Moscow region, near the village of Fryanovo. Its height is 25 meters, trunk diameter is 60 cm, the age of the tree is 84 years. In 2024, a 90-year-old tree from the village of Znamenka in the Mozhaysky District of the Moscow Region was selected. The perfect spruce is 30 meters high, with a trunk diameter of 60 centimeters and a branch span of 8 meters.
A special trailer transports the tree to the Kremlin, bringing the spruce through the Spassky Gate, which is opened only on very special occasions.
When the celebrations are over, the tree is dismantled, with the timber subsequently used to make souvenirs and ice hockey sticks for kids’ teams. In January 2017, the seeds collected from the spruce were sent to a nursery garden to breed coniferous trees, which has now turned into an annual tradition.
Performance in the Kremlin
The main New Year’s tree celebration takes place in the State Kremlin Palace. Usually, several thousand children attend this performance, including the winners of contests and Olympiads, children from orphanages and boarding schools, etc. In 2014, students from Crimea visited the Kremlin for the first time, in 2015 — from Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Donbass. For the New Year’s performance in 2016-2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin invited children of Russian diplomats expelled from the United States at the end of December 2016. Along with them, families of American diplomats accredited in Russia also received invitations. In 2018 and 2019, more than 5,000 schoolchildren from all over the country came to the Kremlin.
Since 2020, in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection, the New Year’s performance in the State Kremlin Palace had been held without an audience, and was broadcast on television and on the Internet. In 2022, children from new Russian regions — Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, as well as children of participants in a special military operation in Ukraine were invited to the main New Year’s tree of the country. The 2024 performance at the State Kremlin Palace, scheduled from December 26 to January 8, is expected to attract 200,000 people.