By nowadays the New Year’s Eve meeting in Russia plays the same role as Christmas in the rest of the world (let’s keep it the pc way and add then that we mean the Christian part of it.  However the Muslims’ Kurbat-Bayram is the same week on)

 So in Russia the former tradition of the Christmas eve meeting was slightly moved in time during the Soviet period.

Few people celebrate Christmas, but everybody celebrates the New Year meeting.

Instead of St Nicolas (future Santa-Klaus) we have Dad-the-Frost (a character that was invented to replace Saint Nicolas after the revolution) and many other Soviet-times traditions. We know them since our childhood, we had been accustomed to them, so now we find it somewhat strange to miss just one bit.

It would be too long to describe them all here.

Apparently, this would be our last New Year eve in Russia.  So we had quiet family night gathering. Anyway this one is the Family holiday; the visits usually take place next week. We had some visitors the day before too; others would come next week, so we had a quiet family party, just the three of us.

Unfortunately, according to the sad last few years’ tradition the snow melted by the very New Year Night. The former day it was minus 5, the night 0+1. It was almost raining.

So by now the snow had almost disappeared.

This year we had no real Christmas tree. In order not to waste an alive tree we got just several fur-tree   branches. By the midnight we got all three together around the table. At the TV another Soviet time’s tradition was to broadcast the comedy “The Irony of the Fate, or “S legkim parom” (sorry, this is untranslatable, it’s … well, it’s untranslatable anyway)

My mother looked just great in her new jersey. Together with the mine they formed nice ensemble. Our dear tom-cat could not miss that moment and joined us too. The newcomer Pussy-cat was hiding around looking for some snacks to steal.

 Despite of being quiet and rather snow free, this New Year’s Eve was rather nice for…. “The next one in Jerusalem!”