It happened historically that the main holiday of the year in Russia, that one with presents and champagne and family party – is New Year. The most enjoying day is the 31 of December, when almost is ready, housewives complete ‘cutting salads’, there is ‘The Irony of Fate…’ showing on TV and some people, the last – search for presents and hurrying to the place where they plan ‘to meet the NY’
Day by day we will prepare to celebrate is, and I will tell you WHAT is important to do))) Here is our plan for the coming two weeks. Let your New Year be Russian!
30 Dec - cooking salad 'Olivie' and ‘Herring under fur-coat’
The Olivier salad (Салат Оливье) is a traditional salad composed of diced potatoes, vegetables, eggs and ham bound in mayonnaise. Worldwide the Olivier is usially referred to as the Russian salad.
Ingridients
can of green peas
300 gr of bolied meat (pork, beef or chicken)
4 eggs
350 gr of boiled potato
150 gr of boiled carrot
100 gr of pickled cucumbers
150 gr of onion
mayonnaise
Cut all in cubes and mix with mayonnaise.
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Salad ‘Herring under fur-coat’
Ingridients
2-3 items of each vegetable (boiled potato, carrot, beetroot, egg and fresh onion)
1 can of herring
1 big an of mayonnaise
Grate potato, beetroot, carrot, ground eggs and cut onion.
Take a flat plate and the salad is put layer by layer. Start with herring and put the 'fur-coat' in the following order
(cometimes they start with potato) herring - onion - egg - mayonnaise - carrot - mayo - potato - mayo - beetroot - mayo.
Put it like a cake - to show the colourful layers.
This is how we celebrate the New Year, or as we say, we 'meet' New Year
After having New Year dinner, we wait for the President's speech which starts at 23.55. After that comes midnight with the Kremlin chimes striking 12. We count and then open champaigne and drink a glass of this sparkling joy congratulating each other. Then comes the national anthem which we traditionally sing - after that there start te fireworks on Red Square. So in order to feel the holiday - learn the words of the anthem
Россия - священная наша держава! Россия - любимая наша страна!
Могучая воля, великая слава -
Твое достоянье на все времена.
Славься, Отечество наше свободное -
Братских народов союз вековой.
Предками данная мудрость народная.
Славься, страна! Мы гордимся тобой!
От южных морей до полярного края
Раскинулись наши леса и поля.
Одна ты на свете! Одна ты такая!
Хранимая Богом родная земля.
Славься, Отечество наше свободное -
Братских народов союз вековой.
Предками данная мудрость народная.
Славься, страна! Мы гордимся тобой!
Широкий простор для мечты и для жизни,
Грядущие нам открывают года.
Нам силу дает наша верность Отчизне.
Так было, так есть и так будет всегда!
Славься, Отечество наше свободное -
Братских народов союз вековой.
Предками данная мудрость народная.
Славься, страна! Мы гордимся тобой!
The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!) is a Sovietcomedy-drama directed by Eldar Ryazanov. The movie was filmed in 1975 at Mosfilm. Simultaneously a screwball comedy and a love story tinged with sadness, the film is traditionally broadcast in Russia and the former Soviet republics and satellite states every New Year's Day.
After the film appeared, it has become an attribute of the New Year Eve, as well as making favourite salads for the New Year table, and waiting for the guests and presents.
Am Dm E
Мне нравится, что Вы больны не мной,
Am Dm E
Мне нравится, что я больна не Вами,
A Dm
Что никогда тяжелый шар земной,
F E7
Не уплывет под нашими ногами.
Am Dm E
Мне нравится, что можно быть смешной,
Dm G7 C
Распущенной и не играть словами.
A7 Dm
И не краснеть удушливой волной,
Слегка соприкоснувшись рукавами.
Спасибо Вам и сердцем и рукой,
За то, что Вы меня, того не зная сами,
Так любите за мой ночной покой,
За редкость встреч закатными часами.
За наше негулянье под луной,
За солнце не у нас над головами,
За то, что Вы, увы, больны не мной,
За то, что я, увы, больна не вами .
Hm G Hm D A D
По улице моей который год звучат шаги, мои друзья уходят.
Em F# Hm G F# Hm
Друзей моих бессмысленный уход той темноте за окнами угоден.
F#m A D Em F#
О одиночество! Как твой характер крут, посверкивая циркулем железным,
Hm Em C G F#
Как холодно, ты размыкаешь круг, не внемля увереньям бесполезным.
Дай стать на цыпочки в твоем лесу, на том конце замедленного жеста.
Найти листву и поднести к лицу, и ощутить сиротство, как блаженство.
Даруй мне тишь твоих библиотек, твоих концертов строгие мотивы,
И мудрая я позабуду тех, что умерли или доселе живы.
Hm G F#m Em A D
И я познаю мудрость и печаль, свой тайный смысл доверят мне предметы,
Em A D Em G F#
Природа прислонясь к моим плечам откроет свои детские секреты.
И вот тогда, из слез, из темноты, из бедного невежества былого
Друзей моих прекрасные черты появятся и растворятся снова.
It's a very nice tradition - to meet Father Frost in Moscow before the NY Eve. This year Father Frost will be met in the Gorky park - the park of entertainment, where in winter almost all the roads become huge wonderful rink - for skating which is so popular in Russia. Father Frost will be met with the parade where the characters of fairy tale will appear.
Traditionally Russian Father Frost has a helper, it is not a deer or a snowman, but ... a snow girl called Snegurochka (Snow Maiden). She is granddaughter of Father Frost and usually accompanies him during the holidays.
25 Dec – Learning the NY song ‘The fir – tree was born in the forest’
‘The fir – tree was born in the forest’ or The forest raised a Christmass tree (В лесу родилась елочка) - is a famous children's New Year song in Russia by Raisa Kudasheva.
Author of song is Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva, teacher, librarian and poet. She wrote poems, tales and songs for children. The poem "Christmas Tree" was written in 1903 and published in the Christmas issue of Child magazine "Baby" (Малютка, Malutka). In 1905 the poem was set to music by an amateur composer Leonid Karlovich Beckmann who wrote this song for his daughter. The original text of Kudasheva had 56 rows. When writing a song poem was reduced.
There are translations of lyrics in Azerbaijani, Greek, English, Finnish and Ukrainian languages.
Today we will help you to choose and write a New Year postcards. The modern postcards are typical and to some extent standard enough, but nice for the fact that it is in Russian! The most pleasant and dear are those which were born in Soviet Union. They are mostly about Father Frost and funny kind animals, but you may also notice the ideas and pride of that period - the space and all about the First Flight into space by SOviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin. For example, from http://www.davno.ru/ ,
here on the right one you may see a popular 'element' of Russian winter, the snowman. We use to make it all together, usually three balls become body+head, a bucket is a hat, a carrot becomes the nose
Besides, new fashionable thing now is to recall pre-revolution times and use the esthetic of the Old Russia. Old Russia postcards congratulate not only on New Year, but of course on Christmas as well. Here are some postcards that suit the idea
New Year postcards
Christmas postcards
for postcards we are grateful to http://www.rusempire.ru/ Now when we have chosen our postcard, let's write some warm words! Start from addressing people, we say 'Dear ... '
Дорогая Аня!
Congratulations on the New Year \ Christmas! or all together
Поздравляю тебя с Новым годом и Рождеством Христовым!
And we wish something like 'all the best', we use to wish health (здоровье), happiness (счастье), joy (радости) in the coming NY
Желаю тебе здоровья, счастья и радости в наступающем году!
In Russia we use to call it New Year tree due to the political changes in our country long ago. But still they changed a lot in people's life.
The NY tree is usually a fir-tree - елка, real or artificial. An angel or star may be placed at the top of the tree, representing the host of angels or the Star of Bethlehem from the Nativity.
The tradition to install and decorate a Ёлка (Yolka) dates back to the 17th century when Peter the Great imported the tradition from his travels of Europe. However, in the Imperial Russia Yolka were banned since 1916 by Synod as a tradition, originated in Germany (Russian counterpart during World War I). Wiki says, This ban was prolonged in the Soviet Union until 1935 (New Year tree was seen as a "bourgeois and religious prejudice" until that year).[The New Year celebration was not banned, though there was no official holiday for it until 1935. The New Year's tree revived in the USSR after the famous letter by Pavel Postyshev, published in Pravda on December 28, 1935, where he asked for installing New Year trees in schools, children's homes, Young Pioneer Palaces, children's clubs, children's theaters and cinema theaters. In 1937, a New Year Tree was also installed in the Moscow Palace of Unions. An invitation to the Yolka at the Palace of Unions became a matter of honour for Soviet children
In 1935 it became a fully secular icon of the New year holiday, for example, the crowning star was regarded not as a symbol of Bethlehem Star, but as the Red Star. Decorations, such as figurines of airplanes, bicycles, space rockets, cosmonauts, and characters of Russian fairy tales, were produced. This tradition persists after the fall of the USSR, with the New Year holiday outweighting the Christmas (7 January) for a wide majority of Russian people
And here is a very interesting tour to the WORKSHOP of New Year toys with details and photos of the whole process!
A very nice cafe, project of Isaac Correa, creator of Correa's restaurants, situated on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya, 76 in Moscow - is a paradise for candy man!
Based on English and american recipes menu offers you loads of cupcakes, tarts, pies, cakes. Cosy atmosphere in pastal colours and interesting design created a new type of city cafe which is worth visiting when in Moscow
To learn more about the cafe go to their web-site http://upsidedowncake.ru to enjoy the views of cafe and cakes
«Совершенно нетипичная история, которая могла произойти только и исключительно в новогоднюю ночь»
“An absolutely untypical story, which could only occur on the New Year night”.
Russian language center invites you to the Russian cinema club
27 December, Tuesday, at 7 pm
'The Irony of fate or Enjoy your bath'
(1975, 184 min, Russia, with English subtitles)
This is a lyrical comedy about four friends going to the sauna in Moscow, as their annual tradition was, and having so much “heat” that Andrey Myagkov’s character ends up at the same apartment as his, in the same street, with the same furniture, only in Leningrad, where he unexpectedly interferes with the life of its lady-owner (Barbara Brylska)…*
Feel free to bring sweets and snack to enjoy the coming holiday!
Admission is free, however please write to us (2teacher@rlc.hk) or call us (2598 8389) to book a seat.
VENUE: Unit 701, 7/F, Arion Commercial Centre, No. 2-12, Queen's Road West, Sheung Wan,Hong Kong
22 Dec – Watching Russian New Year comedies to create the mood
There are plenty of films which are traditionally watched few days before and week after the New Year Eve. Not all of them are about New Year, but these films has become cult films. Here are they!
It is the New Year's Eve and the employees of an Economics Institute are ready with their annual New Year's entertainment program. It includes a lot of dancing and singing, jazz band performance and even magic tricks. Suddenly, an announcement is made that a new director has been elected and that he is arriving shortly. Comrade Ogurtsov arrives in time to review and disapprove of the scheduled entertainment. To him, holiday fun has a different meaning. He imagines speakers reading annual reports to show the Institute's progress over the year, and, perhaps, a bit of serious music, something from the Classics, played by the Veterans' Orchestra.
Obviously, no one wants to change the program a few hours before the show, much less to replace it with something so boring! Now everyone has to team up in order to prevent Ogurtsov from getting to the stage. As some of them trap Ogurtsov one way or another, others perform their scheduled pieces and celebrate New Year's Eve.
Ivan Puhov (A. Abdulov) is in love with a young and pretty girl Alyona (A. Yakovleva). Little does know Ivan that Alyona is working as a witch. The marriage is already scheduled, but just one circumstance of "winter heart" magic induced by Kira Shemahanskaya (Ye. Vasilyeva), the institute director, who is convinced by Sataneev (V. Gaft), separates them. Her friends — magic wood masters, working in NUINU (Scientific Universal Institute of Extraordinary Services, a NIICHAVO subsidiary in Kitezhgrad; for NIICHAVO see Monday Begins on Saturday) - decides to interfere and help to save the love. They convince Puhov to return and save Alyona right now.
The boss of a black market ring (known only as "The Chief") wants to smuggle a batch of jewelry into the Soviet Union by hiding it into the orthopedic cast of a courier. The contraband ends up in the cast on the arm of "ordinary Soviet citizen" Semyon Semyonovich Gorbunkov who gets mistaken for the courier while on a cruise shore excursion. He lets the militsiya know about this, and the militsiya captain uses Gorbunkov as bait to catch the criminals. Most of the plot are various attempts of two inept crooks, Lyolik and Gennadiy Kozodoyev,to lure Gorbunkov into a situation where they could have quietly, without a wet job, taken the cast off him.
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and of course!!!!
The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром!) is a Sovietcomedy-drama directed by Eldar Ryazanov. The movie was filmed in 1975 at Mosfilm. Simultaneously a screwball comedy and a love story tinged with sadness, the film is traditionally broadcast in Russia and the former Soviet republics and satellite states every New Year's Day.
The key to the plot is the relative uniformity of public architecture. This results in the entire planet being polluted with identical, unimaginative multistory apartment buildings - of the sort that can, in fact, be found in the suburbs of every city and town across the former Soviet Union.
Following their annual tradition, a group of friends meet at a banya (public bath) in Moscow to celebrate New Year's Eve. The friends all get very drunk toasting the upcoming marriage of the central male character, Zhenya Lukashin to Galya. After the bath, one of the friends, Pavlik, has to catch a plane to Leningrad; Zhenya, on the other hand, is supposed to go home to celebrate New Year's Eve with his fiancée. Both Zhenya and Pavlik pass out. The others cannot remember which of their unconscious friends is supposed to be catching the plane; eventually they mistakenly decide that it is Zhenya and put him on a plane instead of Pavlik. Zhenya wakes up in Leningrad airport, believing he is still in Moscow. He stumbles into a taxi and, still quite drunk, gives the driver his address. It turns out that in Leningrad there is a street with the same name (3rd Builders' street), with a building at his address which looks exactly like Zhenya's. The key fits in the door of the apartment with the same number (as alluded to in the introductory narration, "...building standard apartments with standard locks").
Later, the real tenant, Nadya, arrives home to find a strange man sleeping in her bed. Zhenya desperately tries to get back to Moscow, and Nadya herself wants to get rid of him as soon as possible. Thus the two are compelled to spend New Year's Eve together...
21 Dec - Thinking over the NY menu, buying champagne and tangerines and sparklers (‘Bengal fire’)
What New Year holiday is possible without Soviet Champagne? Well, it might sound strange, but in Russia we have our own champagne, which we consider to be really good. Besides, in such a way it has become the symbol of a holiday, especially of New Year. Now we can not imagine the wedding without 'rivers' of champagne or New Year without the sound of cork jumping out of the bottle when the Kremlin chimes strike 12! So advice no 1 - buy few bottles in advance!
How to choose it? There are 6 categories according to the amount of sugar in it
extra-brut, или ultra-brut (less 6 gr per liter ); brut (less 15 г/л); extra-sec, или extra-dry (12-20 г/л); sec, или dry (17-35 г/л); demi-sec, или semi-dry (33-55 г/л), doux, или sweet (more than 50 г/л).
Tangerines have a particular smell. It is a smell of New Year for most part of Russians. Due to the fact that some time ago the tangerines arrived to Russia exactly by the NY, it has also become a symbol of the holiday. Few kilograms should be enough... :)
Think over the menu in advance, in order to be sure that all is bought, as right before NY you won't find many of products - as we usually prepare for the celebration thoroughly
What is traditionnally found on our table (this tradition goes deep into soviet times)?
- sandwiches with red caviar - 'Olivie' salad, which we consider to be French originally, still History doubts this fact.. - 'Hering under fur-coat' salad - Fish dishes for those who fast - Kholodets, or meat in jelly - 'Mimose' salad - pickled vegetables (tomato, cucumber) and mushrooms - goose in apples - stuffed pepper
And a very funny thing about all that. Do you know what is really MOST delicious next day after the holiday? - LAST YEAR salads! =)
С наступающим! (congratulations on coming New Year)
You all know that the symbol of the New Year in Russian is Father Frost or Grandfather Frost as we call him – Дед Мороз. He lives in the North of Russia and a small town called Great Ustyug Ded Moroz is often shown wearing a heel-length fur coat, a semi-round fur hat, and valenki or jackboots on his feet. Unlike Santa Claus, he is often depicted as walking with a long magical staff
In advance, before the NY children use to send letters to Father Frost where they share what is their dream. You may also send him a letter and hope that next coming year your dream will come true!
Address
162340, Россия, Вологодская область, город Великий Устюг, дом Деда Мороза
