Red Ted Art - Make crafting with kids easy & fun

Cute & Easy Crafts for Kids

  • Home
  • START HERE
  • Preschool Crafts
  • Easy Kids Crafts
  • Paper Crafts
  • Free Printables
  • About
  • Join Our Newsletter
  • Cookies, Privacy Policies & Disclosure

New Year’s Eve Traditions: Burning Wishes & Grandpa Frost (Russia)

December 23, 2012

New Year's Eve - Burning Wishes (Russia)

Today we have Varya telling us all about New Year’s Eve in Russia!

Whenever I smell tangerines, the sensation instantly brings back warm memories of New Year season.

I’m Varya, mom of 2 girls, an early education expert blogging at Creative World of Varya  about encouraging creativity in children, parenting, cooking and more! I am originally  from Russia and reside in China with my family.

When I was growing up we never celebrated Christmas – most of my childhood Russia still belonged to USSR and New Year became a huge national holiday since around mid-1930s.

It was always a magical time for us. My father would carefully choose a real pine tree (it is called Christmas tree in the West and New Year’s tree in Russia), bring it home, and adjust the bottom to fit the special stand. Sometimes we had to cut the top a bit as well so we could fit the star at the top. Having the start on top was not only symbolic to New Year but the red star especially was somewhat patriotic and sort of represented the Soviet Union.  Then, we would decorate the tree with special toys, real pines, tangerines, chocolate candy, cotton (as if it was the snow), snowflakes that we carefully cut out of paper and lights. We would wrap the presents and put them under the tree.

 New Year's Eve Traditions from around the world - Russia

 Grandpa Frost (Ded Moroz) and his granddaughter Snow-maden (Snegurochka) would visit us with a bag full of presents that were made of toys, candies, chocolate bars and apples. We were always so excited and had to dress up and perform a number in order to receive our gifts.

 

 

2

Most of December 31st we’d spend cooking and baking. Salad “Olivier”, Salad Vinigret, Russian Herring Under Fur Coat, meat cutlets, variety of pickles, sandwiches, dumplings, raviolis – these are a few of the typical Russian dishes that were mandatory on our table. Children would have fruit drinks (home made berry jam mixed in water), adults had to have champagne. Lots of baked stuff, cakes, never ending hot milk tea.

3

Right before the midnight we had a special tradition of wish-making: everyone had a piece of paper and a pencil/pen and a glass filled with a drink and candles lighted. When the last countdown would start on TV, we had to quickly write our wish, burn the paper and drink the ashes together with our drink. Needless to say the whole glass of drink had to be finished! It was a real competition and I remember how I was so disappointed a few times that I didn’t make it on time. When we grew older we would give it another try: Russia has 8 time zones, so after we had our midnight, we could “meet the New Year” once again an hour or 2 later!

New Year's Eve - Burning Wishes (Russia)

I don’t remember if any wishes came through. I look back now and it was just fun filled with laughter, smell of tangerines and pine tree resin. You could try doing this during your New Year celebration!

New Year's Eve Traditions from Around the World (Russia)

HAPPY NEW YEAR from Russia!!

Want MORE New Year’s Eve Traditions? Take a look at:

New Year's Eve Traditions from around the wrold

«
»

Filed Under: New Year's Eve 3 Comments

Comments

  1. Varya @ CWOV says

    October 7, 2013 at 2:41 am

    Hi, just dropping by to say LittleArtists.Blog.Com no longer exists and migrated to CreativeWorldOfVarya.Com 🙂

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Christmas Decorations Around the World {Christmas in Different Lands} says:
    December 3, 2015 at 2:48 pm

    […] This is a Christmas tree in my mom’s home several years ago – originally shared over at Red Ted Art […]

    Reply
  2. Christmas Tree Tassel Decoration | Creative World Of Varya says:
    December 1, 2017 at 9:45 am

    […] Yet, celebrating New Year meant decorating the tree in December, preparing frozen goods, and having the same excitement and anticipation as people around the world have for Christmas.  […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Recipe Rating




Welcome!

Welcome

Hello! I am Maggy and I love all things crafty and sharing my craft ideas and how tos.

The aim of this site is to provide easy, do-able and fun crafts for all ages.

Categories

Archives

Crafty Blogs

Copyright © 2021 · Website Design By Jumping Jax Designs

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. These cookies feedback information to our analytics and advertisers. We track views of the site - which pages are visited, whether you are a regular or returning visitor to help generate a more personalised experience. You can switch cookies off or follow the READ MORE link for more and information on how to.OkRead more