So beloved by everyone, the most cheerful and beautiful New Year holiday did not always exist. The history of the emergence of the custom to celebrate the coming of the new year tells about the long journey that the holiday had to go through.
New Year was born about 25 centuries ago in Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) and immediately firmly entered the measured life of its inhabitants. And it was celebrated then no less stormy and cheerfully than now. How did he get to Europe? According to the assumption of scientists, the Jews who were in Babylonian captivity liked the merry holiday so much that they included it in the Bible. From them, the New Year tradition passed to the Greeks, and then - stepped into Western Europe.
In Russia, the great reformer Peter I ordered the celebration of the New Year, having issued his probably the happiest and kindest decree of January 1, 1700. And it was written in that decree: “In honor of the New Year, decorate with fir trees, amuse children, ride on sleds from the mountains. And adults do not commit drunkenness and massacre - there are enough other days for that. By the same decree, the tsar ordered to celebrate the New Year in the following way: to burn fires, launch fireworks, congratulate each other, decorate houses with conifers and branches.
Of course, the Russian people, who love unrestrained fun, happily obeyed the decree. Carnivals and masquerades swept across Russia. What is also interesting, in Russian houses they did not put Christmas trees, but simply sprigs of spruce or pine trees, and they decorated them with sweets, fruits and nuts in golden paper. And the Christmas trees themselves were put on the holiday at first only in the houses of the Germans living in St. Petersburg. And only by the end of the 19th century, Christmas trees deservedly became the main decoration in city and village houses, and in the 20th century they were already an inseparable attribute of all winter holidays until 1918.
In the difficult revolutionary years, few people decorated a Christmas tree in their home, moreover, this custom was condemned by the new government. But in 1935 the tree became a new symbol not of Christmas, but of the New Year in the Soviet country. The red five-pointed star replaced the one of Bethlehem, and by order of I. V. Stalin, together with Santa Claus and the traditional New Year trees, our country met the year 1935 from the birth of Christ.
And to this day, every year on the night of January 1, gifts are hidden under a green beauty, and the expectation of a miracle makes this holiday the most beloved.
