Lessons from Novy god, the Russian New Year’s Eve

When I was growing up in Russia, Novy god (Новый Год) was pretty much the only holiday. Since the beginning of winter I would wait impatiently for the fresh-smelling spruce-tree to appear in our Large Room so that my mother and I could decorate it with glass ornaments, wrapped candy, and garlands of cut paper.

No, this wasn’t Christmas. Despite the tree, the presents, and the arrival of Ded Moroz, who looks like a Slavic Father Frost, Novy god is the Russian New Year. It is celebrated with much fanfare, but without any references to religion, on December 31st.

I vaguely recall celebrating other holidays: going on a May Day parade, having matzoh ball soup for Passover, but nothing came close to Novy god, which was like Christmas, Halloween, and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one.

After the tree was set up and decorated in the corner of the larger of our two rooms, we began preparing for the children’s costume ball. My greatest wish was to go as Sniegurachka, Ded Moroz’s young sidekick. In Russia Ded Moroz is a grandfather rather than a father and his assistant, Sniegurachka, is something like a granddaughter.

I didn’t care much about helping Ded Moroz, but I wanted to wear a white dress and have my hair done up in a large white bow like the Sniegurachkas I saw the year before. Some of the girls wore bows on other days, but my mother wasn’t much into Russian preschool fashions and cut my hair into a short bob.

Of course, the main event was December 31st. It was a big festive dinner that started in the late afternoon and ended at midnight with cheers and Champaign. My mother would begin baking the night before. Since she rarely baked, the profiteroles, apple cakes, and walnut-shaped cookies that came out of the oven seemed to materialize by a sort of magic.

By the time the guests began to arrive the table was set with all the standard dishes: Olivier and Vinaigrette salads in large porcelain bowls, pickled herring under a blanket, platters of deli meats, fresh vegetables, and stacks of thickly sliced bread.

These were the staples of most celebrations. The salads’ main ingredients — potatoes and mayonnaise — were supposed to hold up the guests through multiple glasses of vodka. On Novy god, you had to drink at least one glass to say goodbye to the old year before you started welcoming the new.

My mother brought out the real delicacies closer to midnight. The most decadent of these was caviar. We always had red caviar — little pinkish bubbles that burst on the tongue — and sometimes black caviar. Black caviar came in a tiny jar that only held enough of the stuff for each of us to taste.

I tried hard to stay awake until midnight so I could watch my father open the Champaign and hear everyone cheer at when the hosts of the T.V. show Ogonyek announced the official start of the new year.

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When we moved to Israel, we stopped celebrating Novy god. There were no spruce trees around — cut or otherwise. More to the point, Novy god wasn’t a Jewish holiday, and so celebrating was now a grave offense. As we struggled to keep up with the elaborate rituals of the Jewish calendar, we let Novy god go.

After a while, my parents began quietly celebrating Novy god again. They would have a glass of champagne, Olivier salad, and later, when a Russian grocery opened downtown, caviar and Soviet-style deli meats.

Sometimes I’d join them for the special dinner, and we’d watch the Irony of Fate or Carnival Night together. But Novy god never came back as a real holiday for me. It was not like Passover or Rosh Hashana — days we got off from school and that everyone else celebrated. Even as the Russian-Israeli community grew, making the celebrations a bit more mainstream, the holiday stayed confined to my parents’ culture, a culture of which I was vaguely ashamed.

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When we moved to the U.S., holidays became less important. No one seemed to care if you celebrated Hanukah, Christmas, Novy god, or a holiday of your own invention (Festivus anyone?).

Mostly out of nostalgia, I sometimes buy a potted rosemary plant at Trader Joes and decorate it with a few Christmas ornaments. My parents pick out a small spruce on the day after Christmas and set it up for the 31st. If I don’t have to work, and if we’re all in the same part of the country, I join them for the holiday meal and a glass of Champaign.

Despite this, I haven’t given much thought to Novy god until last year’s New Year’s Eve. After reading countless articles about punishing New Year’s resolutions, and watching the crowds at Times Square teeter on the edge of hypothermia, I suddenly found myself feeling grateful for Novy god.

Yes, like New Year’s, Novy god is about renewal, but it is not the kind of renewal that calls on us to undertake laborious projects of self-transformation, projects where we become our own managers and taskmasters. Novy god celebrates a softer, more forgiving transition from the old to the new. We are not required to manufacture a whole “New You”; it’s enough to become better, wiser version of our old selves.

One of the most popular Novy god movies, the Irony of Faith (S Legkim parom), captures the spirit of this kind of transformation. The movie is a romantic comedy of errors in which the main character Zhenia, gets drunk and finds himself in Nadia’s apartment, which he believes to be his own. His mistake was understandable for Soviet viewers’: Zhenia and Nadia’s apartments, street names and numbers are identical, except that Zhenia lives in Moscow and Nadia is in Leningrad.

Zhenia and Nadia spend the night fighting, reconciling, and, of course, singing songs. Nadia realizes that she isn’t in love with her fiancé of convenience Hippolyte — a stolid but overly-jealous catch who becomes the butt of many of the film’s jokes. Zhenia, for his part, realizes that he has to become more thoughtful and responsible.

Inevitably the two characters fall in love, giving the movie its feel-good ending — but it isn’t a fairytale ending. The characters do not turn into a prince and a princess but into wiser, fuller versions of themselves. They return to their extended families, their friends, their jobs, so that the renewal isn’t just about the individual or the couple.

And so, as I prepare to say goodbye to 2019 and welcome another year — and another decade — I plan to celebrate Novy god, rather than New Year’s eve. I will reflect on the outgoing year, and try to find greater wisdom, joy, and compassion. I hope that others will do the same.

S nastupaeschim!