Russian Deepavali and the Mouse King: The Nation and Its Dearest Holiday
19:45 25.12.2024 (Updated: 13:46 09.01.2025)
© Photo : Большой театр/Дамир Юсупов
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Izvestia warns that online crooks create fake accounts daily, offering discounted tickets to the Bolshoi Theater's Nutcracker ballet. Once paid, they vanish.
They simply steal your money, the venerable Izvestia newspaper warns its audience. The online crooks open like 200 fake accounts a day, claiming that they can get you your tickets to the grand Bolshoi Theater in Moscow for the famous Nutcracker ballet, for a seriously discounted price. The moment you pay them, they disappear from cyberspace.
Not that this kind of swindling is completely new. The first organised crime rings buying up all the theatre tickets for the night and then selling them for much bigger price have been known in Moscow since the imperial times. Fake tickets have been a part of such scams since at least early 20th century. So what’s so special about today’s situation?
It’s the sheer scale of the scams of today that’s special. Look at it again: we were talking about 200 hundred fake accounts per day. That happens, though, only between November and early January. And it applies only, or mostly, to just one show, the mentioned Nutcracker by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the greatest of Russian composers (1840-1893).
What we have here is a wonderful illustration to a subject called the studies in the Russian national character. Ask a question about what kind of nation Russia is, and what to expect of it in tomorrow’s world, and sooner or later you’ll bump against that old tradition – watching the Nutcracker on December 31, the New Year Eve, even coming to Moscow from the province especially for that purpose. Or, since it has always been next to impossible to find a place there on December 31, people try to go there a bit before or after that day, since the Nutcracker is on stage almost every night at that period. The online crooks and the ticket speculators of old have always been getting rich on that national obsession.
It’s a separate and long story about how it happened that a German Christmas tale has shifted from December 24 one week forward. The thing is, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7, sharply differing from the Catholic and other churches of the West by sticking to the so-called old calendar. So, January 7 is by now mostly a purely religious holiday, while the New Year in between has simply inherited all the glamor and fun of it, being accepted as the main holiday of the nation by people of all the numerous national groups and religions.
Tell me how do you have fun, and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are. The same principle applies to nations. So, the special Russian love to its New Year says a lot about basic traits of all the citizens of Russia.
To put is simply, the Russian New Year is, first, about lights and noise. Wait a minute, how about Dipavali? But then, a lot of books have been written not only about amazing likeness of Russians and Indians. There is even a lot of research on the subject of nativity of the Russian nation, claiming that we are originally Indian, with plenty of linguistics proving it. Ognj, the Russian word for fire, is supposed to come from the Indian agni, and nobody was able to dispute it.
Second national trait manifested in the Russian New Year celebration is deep and unrestrained romanticism, but we’ll talk about it a bit later. Let’s have a look at the lights and hear the noise, first.
There is a huge, like 60 meters tall, fir tree brought from a forest and put in the Moscow Red Square annually for the New Year, and it shines with fairy lights. A garland of small lamps circling the tree is 2 kilometers long this year, the news broadcasts told us yesterday. Then there are slightly or seriously smaller trees, put it all kind of locations in every city bathed in all kinds of light, be it megamalls or private homes, and the trees being natural or artificial. And they shine like crazy. Well, being an energy superpower (and a land of endless forests), Russia can certainly afford that luxury.
What’s interesting, originally the Christmas tree was something else, and a religious symbol it is definitely not. It was rather small and used in big families to hang all kind of sweets and foil-wrapped nuts on it. At a certain moment of the Christmas evening, the 19th century literature tells us, all the children of the family were asked in the main room, after which they were stripping the tree of its sweets with incredible speed. Now it’s vastly different, of course.
And then there are fireworks. Here we have a problem, since that thing has obviously originated in ancient China, where people use all that bang and light to chase away the demons, while the demons regroup and come back every year, to be chased away again. Yes, Chinese that thing may be, it came to Russia via Germany a couple of centuries ago. For years and years now, that celestial barrage became an integral part of our New Year celebrations.
It can be a serious political problem sometimes. After all, Russia is a nation at war, attacked almost three years ago by NATO coalition, and that war has not yet ended. So how can you spend money on fireworks now, say the extreme-left ultra-patriots. How can you celebrate and have fun, while our soldiers fight at the frontline? We can only do it when victory is here, they add, and then replicate the victorious salute of 1945, the year of the grand victory over Nazis. While until that victory is here, all the nation must sit tight in a higher state of mobilisation and be very modest in festivities of all kinds.
That dispute about lifestyles between angry patriots and just patriots have been in the center of Russian political debate for three years already. Some city authorities took heed of that situation and were ambiguous about light and sound at first.
But the great Russian nation wasn’t ambiguous at all, with millions of families still buying their own fireworks and chasing demons all over the Russian skies. This year that trend is even more obvious, especially since we are at the very least not losing that war, are gaining ground at the battlefield and expect a successful outcome rather soon.
And now it’s time to fulfil the promise of mentioning the unchained Russian romanticism. The thing is, Nutcracker is a kind of embodiment of that national Russian trait, and it’s no coincidence the ballet is attached firmly to the New Year.
As I’ve mentioned before, the tale is German, but the feelings (as in music) is Russian. It’s about a prince, charmed into a wooden instrument, kind of pliers to crack nuts with. You put a nut into its ugly toothy mouth, and, crack, it deals with the task.
Then there was a little girl who took pity on that instrument, broken already, and saved it from mice and other calamities. So, invigorated by that pity and trust, the toy acquired a new life during the dreamy Christmas night, to repeal a mice invasion on the house (a common household problem not long ago). The Nutcracker commanded then a troop of other toys and, finally, slew the huge and ugly Mouse King, saving all the family and becoming human again. All that was needed, was young lady’s deep feelings and trust.
That, indeed, is absolutely Russian. And, hopefully, one cannot defeat a nation that believes in fairy tales, loves its gala ending of a year and can always deal with invasions headed by yet another Mouse King.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
