Another thought on Christmas and Russian-style New Years Eve
This was originally supposed to be part of the previous post, but it didn't quite flow with the rest of what I wrote, so I decided to split it off into a separate post.
Last year, over in her Wordpress blog, my mom wrote that, back when we were still in Russia, my mom wanted us to celebrate Christmas more western-style, doing the gift-giving and such on December 25, but she knew that it would look weird in Russia and decided to hold off on that.
A year later, that still puzzles me.
If you are going to try to shed the legacy of the Soviet Union, the way it took all of the secular-ish aspects of Christmas and grafted it onto New Years Eve, then why not do it on January 7? I mean, that's when Russians celebrate Christmas. Why follow Western traditions?
But, more importantly, I'm not sure why one would even want that.
Western Christmas is an interesting beast. One would argue that, in this day in age, things like Santa Claus, the Christmas Tree and the Christmas dinner effectively overshadow the religious components. Yet it's also inextricably tied to its Christian origins. Well, Christian celebrations grafted onto a pagan holiday origins, if you want to be pedantic, but the fact remains that, in the United States and, I suspect, other Western countries, one can't escape the Christian context. American Jews don't celebrate Christmas. Neither do a lot of American Muslims, and Hindus, and Sihks... you get the idea.
The great thing about Soviet New Year is that it strips out the Christian elements entirely. It can be enjoyed as a celebration of the end of the year that also happens to involve gift-giving and a holiday dinner, and maybe a decorated tree and a Ded Moroz-type figure. It can theoratically be enjoyed by anyone.
Trading that for a holiday with an explicit Christian context seems like a downgrade, is all I'm saying.
Of course, it's not quite that simple. New Years Eve has cultural baggage, too - it's just that it's tied to Russian culture and the Soviet system of government rather than a religion. There is a reason why, when writing a Christmas story (that may yet go up on this LJ at some point), I had an Azerbaijani-American snark about Russian colonialism when discussing how her people celebrate New Years.
It's just that... my mom is half-Jewish. Maybe I'm influenced by all of the times I've heard American Jews complain about Christmas and the way it looms large over American cultural landscape, maybe nostalgia is playing a role in this, but I don't understand where she was coming from back then, I really don't.
Last year, over in her Wordpress blog, my mom wrote that, back when we were still in Russia, my mom wanted us to celebrate Christmas more western-style, doing the gift-giving and such on December 25, but she knew that it would look weird in Russia and decided to hold off on that.
A year later, that still puzzles me.
If you are going to try to shed the legacy of the Soviet Union, the way it took all of the secular-ish aspects of Christmas and grafted it onto New Years Eve, then why not do it on January 7? I mean, that's when Russians celebrate Christmas. Why follow Western traditions?
But, more importantly, I'm not sure why one would even want that.
Western Christmas is an interesting beast. One would argue that, in this day in age, things like Santa Claus, the Christmas Tree and the Christmas dinner effectively overshadow the religious components. Yet it's also inextricably tied to its Christian origins. Well, Christian celebrations grafted onto a pagan holiday origins, if you want to be pedantic, but the fact remains that, in the United States and, I suspect, other Western countries, one can't escape the Christian context. American Jews don't celebrate Christmas. Neither do a lot of American Muslims, and Hindus, and Sihks... you get the idea.
The great thing about Soviet New Year is that it strips out the Christian elements entirely. It can be enjoyed as a celebration of the end of the year that also happens to involve gift-giving and a holiday dinner, and maybe a decorated tree and a Ded Moroz-type figure. It can theoratically be enjoyed by anyone.
Trading that for a holiday with an explicit Christian context seems like a downgrade, is all I'm saying.
Of course, it's not quite that simple. New Years Eve has cultural baggage, too - it's just that it's tied to Russian culture and the Soviet system of government rather than a religion. There is a reason why, when writing a Christmas story (that may yet go up on this LJ at some point), I had an Azerbaijani-American snark about Russian colonialism when discussing how her people celebrate New Years.
It's just that... my mom is half-Jewish. Maybe I'm influenced by all of the times I've heard American Jews complain about Christmas and the way it looms large over American cultural landscape, maybe nostalgia is playing a role in this, but I don't understand where she was coming from back then, I really don't.