Pre-New Year's excitement: how and what merchants traded on Christmas Eve

[jisansorkar12]

Long before the Coca-Cola Company popularized the image of the kind, charming old man Santa Claus, who became a symbol of winter magic in the West, Russian artisans and merchants were shaping the Christmas traditions of the Russian Empire with their marketing. They brought beautiful Christmas tree decorations from abroad, and then learned to make them themselves. They designed and produced cards, decorations, and sweets that created an unforgettable holiday atmosphere.

The article will be useful for those interested in the history of Russian ukraine whatsapp list entrepreneurship, marketing techniques and sales secrets that formed the Christmas holiday culture. So, where and how did enterprising merchants earn money during the winter holidays?

Christmas tree
Let's start with the fact that people prepared for the winter holidays in advance, starting in October. Traditionally, Christmas in pre-revolutionary Russia was more important than the New Year, and was celebrated first, on December 25. Peter I ordered to celebrate the New Year on January 1 in 1700. At that time, he ordered everyone to have fun, launch fireworks and decorate houses with fir branches. But the Christmas tree became the central element of the holidays later, in the 1830s, during the reign of Nicholas I, thanks to his wife Frederica Louise Charlotte Wilhelmina of Prussia (Alexandra Feodorovna in Orthodoxy) - a pure-blooded German, like many Russian tsarinas.

With her arrival, the European tradition of decorating a Christmas tree and putting presents under it migrated to the Winter Palace. But if small trees were common in Europe, then in Russia they approached the issue on a grand scale: a ceiling-high tree was considered especially chic on Christmas trees in rich homes.

Alexandra Feodorovna decorates the Christmas tree

In 1828, Alexandra Feodorovna held a children's Christmas party for her children and nieces in the Grand Dining Room of the palace. The children of some courtiers were invited.

A large Christmas tree was also installed in the Winter Palace, and small Christmas trees were intended for each family member. And what was fashionable in the imperial family was soon picked up by the aristocracy, and then by the entire people. Over time, the holidays themselves began to be called Christmas trees: charity Christmas trees for the poor, Christmas trees for children and adults, with balls and carnivals appeared.

A few days before the holiday, large city squares turned into Christmas tree markets and resembled a thicket. Here is how writer and merchant Ivan Shmelev recalled one of these markets opposite the Bolshoi Theater: “There used to be a forest on Theater Square. They would stand in the snow. And when the snow started falling, they would lose their way! Men in sheepskin coats, like in a forest. People would stroll, choosing. Dogs in the trees were like wolves, really. Fires were burning, to warm themselves. Smoke was rising in columns.”

How much did Christmas trees cost? Historian Igor Zimin cites in his books the calculations of the court confectioner, who was responsible for decorating all the trees in the Winter Palace. In 1880, two trees with bronze decorations cost 45 rubles each, three with ordinary ones - 25 rubles each.

Christmas tree market in 1913

Christmas tree market in St. Petersburg. 1913.

And philologist Elena Dushechkina writes that a fully decorated tree could cost from 20 to 200 rubles - not a cheap pleasure. Even in the first decades of the 20th century, decorated trees were installed mainly in rich and well-to-do homes, as well as in the homes of the intelligentsia.