New Year’s Tree​—Is It Russian? Is It Christian?

“AT THE beginning of the 1830’s, the evergreen tree was still being referred to as a ‘fetching German notion.’ At the end of that decade, it had ‘become a custom’ in homes of the St. Petersburg elite. . . . Only in the homes of the clergy and in peasant huts did the evergreen tree fail to take root in the 19th century. . . .

“Before, the tree . . . was not especially favored. Its association as a death-symbol and its link with ‘the underworld’ according to Russian tradition, as well as the tradition of setting the tree on the roofs of taverns, contrasted with the changes in attitudes that occurred in the middle of the 19th century. . . . It is fully understandable that in the process of acceptance, the foreign tradition would take on the same meaning that was attributed to the Christmas tree in the West, its link to the Christmas theme. . . .

“The process of the tree’s Christianization was not very smooth in Russia. It met opposition from the Orthodox Church. The clergy saw in the new celebration ‘demonic action,’ a pagan tradition, which had nothing to do with the birth of the Savior, and furthermore, it was a tradition from the West.”​—Professor Yelena V. Dushechkina, doctor of philological sciences at the St. Petersburg State University.

[Picture Credit Line on page 32]

Photograph: Nikolai Rakhmanov