Episode 2: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like New Year’s
I loved the song Zolushka (Cinderella) when I was young, and still do. The first verse goes something like this:
Believe it or not, last night I dreamed that a prince came for me, riding a silver stallion. And we were greeted by dancers, a drummer, and a trumpeter, forty-eight conductors, and one grey-haired violinist.
While this vision of the king’s ball doesn’t exactly mesh with the Disney version, it enchanted to me as a young girl. My memories of it are all tied up with the period leading up to New Year’s Eve. The Soviet Union, having outlawed all religion and religious practices, gleefully transferred all Christmas traditions to New Year’s Eve. The tree, the presents, and Father Frost (Santa) were part of my childhood every December.
As Soviet citizens, our being Jewish notwithstanding, my parents bought a live tree, which we decorated with beautiful, fragile, glass ornaments and topped with an equally lovely and fragile glass topper.
I loved, loved, loved Leningrad in December. It was magic, the way the city transformed from autumn’s grey, cold, rainy dreariness to winter’s frosted, glittering, jewel box! Leningrad was alive to me in December. Lights everywhere! Store windows displaying things in pretty packaging (never mind that the stores were mostly empty inside)! Oranges wrapped in shiny foil and candy in gorgeous boxes!
Leningrad’s elegant bridges and buildings sparkled under the star-filled sky! Magic, I tell you.
I had no difficulty, as a child, believing in Grandfather Frost, Russia’s version of Santa. He always appeared sometime during night of December 31, with his bag of gifts. No chimney climbing for Grandfather Frost, either. Leningrad’s residents didn’t have chimneys anyway, living as we all did, in apartments. Grandfather Frost simply appeared, though you could never see him, delivered a present for each person in the house, and disappeared. If you slept through it, you’d find your gift the morning of January 1, but if you were very lucky and allowed to stay up late, you might just hear him, and you might just get your gift earlier!
This actually happened to me one year. My parents were hosting a small gathering for friends, when suddenly there was a loud “thump” and the lights went out. When the lights came back on a few minutes later, there were presents under the tree! Of course, everyone knew exactly what had happened. Grandfather Frost had been there! I was beside myself at the idea that I had actually been awake to “witness” his visit. I have absolutely no recollection of the actual gift bestowed on my by Grandfather Frost that New Year’s Eve. That wasn’t the point at all.
Grandfather Frost must have really liked me. Not only did he show up the night of that party, but he actually walked right up to our apartment building one year with his daughter, the Snow Maiden. I was playing outside with a friend and saw him knocking on the door. I didn’t know why he was there, and I didn’t think to ask. Many years later, I found a photo of that incident. Grandfather Frost looked suspiciously like my dad in a fur-trimmed suit and a white beard, but that doesn’t spoil the magic of that memory for me.
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