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Soviet Santa
- andreyk 7y agoAs a Russian, can confirm this article is quite accurate - my family only ever celebrates New Years, it's the same as Christmas is usually in the West, and Ded Moroz is totally a thing.
- dmix 7y agoHow do you pronounce Ded Moroz in an anglophone way? I noticed you used “Dez” instead of Ded.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- firstbabylonian 7y agoThat’s a typo. The pronunciation is close to “dee-yet mah-ross”
- dang 7y agoBelated, but we fixed the typo above.
- izacus 7y agoYep, we called him "Dedek Mraz" in the balkans which also literaly translates into Grandfather Frost. (Although we did celebrate christmas since the anti-religion clampdown wasn't that aggressive in Yugoslavia.)
- xmars 7y agoMraz, sounds like мразь, not a very good word :))
- cema 7y agoClose languages often sound funny to reach other.
- pandaman 7y agoThe word literally means "something that causes chills" so it's not that different from slavic "mraz". It just had been used exclusively in a figurative meaning to describe something that is so disgusting that it makes one shake.
- f2f 7y ago"дядо мраз" in bulgaria. we also celebrated xmas with a quiet family vegetarian dinner, not having such a massive clampdown on religion, and "mraz" delivered presents on new year's. after 1989 things came back to normality and he's now called "дядо коледа". new year's is just a drinking holiday :)
- throwlaplace 7y agohttps://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ru&tl=en&text=%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%B4%20%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B7 https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=ru&t... click the speaker
- kohtatsu 7y agoNo thanks.
- cema 7y agoJoke is, it is pronounced "dead morose". Close but not quite (the first word is more like "dzed").
- cperciva 7y agoBut do you celebrate New New Year's or Old New Year's?
- DenisM 7y agoBoth, naturally.
- kuzko_topia 7y agoGosh, this website is one of the worst cookie consent implementation with the oath familly...
- tomaszs 7y agoI live in Poland. Before 89 when my country was occupied by Russia, "Soviet Santa" was forced here to replace Santa Clous. It was one of many things that was made to erase Christianity and replace it with atheism and communism. Fake Christmas, fake Santa, zero beliefs. I was young back than but i felt its shallow and dark. So for me Soviet Santa is a symbol of the occupation and Russian tyrrany Poland was under until 89...
- cat199 7y agoThe connection of the solidarity movement and JPII with the downfall of communism is strong, and not without reason - official communist ideology seeks to destroy religion by force of arms. Apparently as witnessed by downvoting, some don't like anyone to acknowledge this fact.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't go on about downvoting–it's tedious and breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Also, please don't take HN threads into religious or ideological flamewar. Your comment doesn't exactly go there but it's a step in that direction, and we're trying to avoid that on this site.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- trhway 7y agohistory is never one-sided like hand-picking of facts and interpretations tends to present. Together with the "occupation by Russia" Poland also got to annex significant parts of German territories (some of those had had no valid Polish claim, like for example the Prussia, some had been historically contested between German and Poland) - it was practically spoils of war gifted by the "Russian occupiers" to Poland (any gratitude for the gift?). The "occupation" has ended 30 years ago, and that is basically a right thing. Any plans on giving the annexed territories back?
- cat199 7y ago> Santa Claus is one of several manifestations of a particular wintertime character, probably originating with the pagan, pre-Christian Germanic and Norse god Odin. No, 'Santa Slaus' is a distortion of st. nicholas, to which people may or may not have ascribed characteristics of previous 'wintertime characters', as attested to by the further examples of: Sinterklaas, Mikulás, which are both actually not distinct entities, but both 'St Nicholas' in their respective languages. One can make some anthropological case that these are 'manifestations', but in the case of 'Santa Klaus', the core 'identity' is still a 'nicholas figure' to which people may or may not have ascribed other attributes. Lineage and conceptual transactions are important here, esp. since this makes a less appealing narrative to spin, when one is trying to downplay the second-ranked feast day in the official state religion of an empire that viewed itself as the direct and legitimate successor of imperial christian rome. e.g: "It wasn’t really a festival exactly, but more of a somber religious holiday marked by fasting and long church services in Old Church Slavonic" This is what feast days (aka 'festivals') are in orthodoxy. Followed by a 'feast'. So yes, it was a festival, "exactly". Christmas was a major day of important significance in imperial russia, and Fr. Frost was directly promoted as a secular replacement for St. Nicholas, because soviet-style communists are militantly athiest and hostilly anti-religion. The very fact that this figure exists is a testimonial to the need to provide a 'foil' for the people to accept his removal, rather than just some casual 'cultural shift' to a different 'winter character manifestation'. As for people 'forgetting how to celebrate christmas' during soviet times, please recall (whether positively or negatively) that Mr. Putin's mother had him baptized in secret from his communist father and he makes pilgrimages to monasteries regularly. The current high place of the church in russian society did not just originate in some ideological vaccum, many never gave up in the face of overt and militant religious hostility.
- twooclock 7y agoCorrect artice and being from ex communist country even after more than 25 years I certainly have issues celebrating christmas. "They were able to celebrate Christmas, but they had never done it before." most resonates with me. Makes me realize the importance of traditions and how fragile they are.
- m0zg 7y agoYou do? We (Russian Americans in the US) celebrate two Christmases and two New Years, both by the "new" calendar (Dec 25/Jan 1) and by the old (Jan 7 Christmas, Jan 13 "Old" New Year). Because, as they say in Russia, "there's no reason not to drink".
- twooclock 7y agoSure we have this drinking excuse as well! (Mind that even our anthem is basicly a toast) But Christmas went more into comsumerism with crowded shopping malls, excessive buying etc. We stil have some people celebrating santa and others dedek mraz.
- nradov 7y agoSerbians also still celebrate Christmas and New Years according to the old Julian calendar. In a few thousand years they really will have Christmas in July.
- tomaszs 7y agoI live in Poland. Before 89 when my country was occupied by Russia, "Soviet Santa" was forced here to replace Santa Clous. It was one of many things that was made to erase Christianity and replace it with atheism and communism. Fake Christmas, fake Santa, zero beliefs. I was young back than but i felt its shallow and dark. So for me Soviet Santa is a symbol of the occupation and Russian tyrrany Poland was under until 89..
- dang 7y agoPlease don't copy/paste comments here. It strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio. Especially please don't do it as an end run around moderation—that's not cool.
- bad_user 7y agoWe also had "Ded Moroz" in communist Romania, translated to "Moș Gerilă". It was imported due to the soviet occupation after WWII and the subsequent adoption of communism. The word Christmas was censored in 1948. In the 80s our beloved supreme leader wanted to associate those presents with the state instead of Moș Gerilă, so things got a little weird with the state propaganda. After the revolution in 1989 we changed the holiday to the Christmas in the Gregorian calendar and Santa Claus, translated as "Moș Crăciun" (Father Christmas).
- jimbobimbo 7y agoWe still don't know who was Ded Moroz's son or daughter though.
- xmars 7y agoСнегурочка. But she is probably granddaughter
- ddsea 7y agoAccording to [1], "Ded" (literally Grandfather) is used here in the sense of an old man or an ancestor. Snegurochka is his daughter. Ded Moroz's mother was Baba Yaga, and his wife was the Snow Queen. Hope this clears everything up. [1] https://cb-rzhev.blogspot.com/2013/11/blog-post_4347.html https://cb-rzhev.blogspot.com/2013/11/blog-post_4347.html
- aasasd 7y agoEven though we're behind Europe in religiosity and far behind the US, Orthodox Christianity was alive and well here after the fall of the SU, and Christmas and Easter are variously observed. It's rather notable that despite the Bolsheviks' no-nonsense and literal approach to eradicating religion, Christianity and the church have survived the Soviet era pretty well. One reason for this is said to be that in the ramp-up to the Great Patriotic War, the government dropped the anti-religious rhetoric and adopted instead the position of ‘unite and defend your motherland and the people’. Add to this the fact that in the 70s and likely later, people were still migrating from rural villages to the cities, with the whole baggage of inherited religiosity and mishmash of folk beliefs. My grandmother put in plenty of time in prayer each day. Icons or whole arrangements of them are a feature in many homes, cars and sometimes, more rarely, offices. And I still receive messages from my parents each year, commemorating birth and then the resurrection of Christ. Folk culture doesn't tend to follow an official doctrine, as exemplified by troves of Soviet jokes—and is also not big on ideological clarity, so many didn't see a problem in subscribing to both socialism and Christianity, along with crystal healing, magical powers of thought and a bouquet of other fringe beliefs. In the 90s, my home city already had a bunch of churches including at least one large temple, and one or two monasteries—and I don't think they popped up recently. Notably also, even Bolsheviks preserved old and unassuming Karelian wooden churches, recognizing them as architectural and cultural monuments—while demolishing some huge temples in Moscow. Like the Kondopoga church, built in 1774 and which somebody burned down in August of 2018: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Church_of_the_Dormition_of_the_Theotokos_(Kondopoga) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Church_of_the_Do... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormition_Church,_Kondopoga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormition_Church,_Kondopoga
- RickJWagner 7y agoIt's just my opinion, but it's not uncommon. I believe Blaise Pascal (the brilliant French mathematician) got it right when he said "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing....." For this reason, I doubt religion will ever die. It will be with us always.
- 7y ago