December is one of my favorite months of the year. From the first snow to the holidays, it’s a month when winter is still magical and there are plenty of occasions to meet up with friends and family to enjoy endless mugs of hot chocolate. It’s also a time when all of the religions have all of the holidays, making it even more special to just about everyone.

A lot of people have asked me what my plans for Christmas are. Given that I grew up in the US and Europe, they’re usually talking about December 25, alongside trees, presents, and Father Christmas. But here, things are a little bit different.

First of all, because Christians here are mostly Russian Orthodox, Christmas actually falls on January 7th, instead of on December 25th as in Protestant, Catholic, and many other denominations.  Second, Christmas was actually stopped for a long time.

See, back in Ye Olde Stalin Tyme, the Marxism-Leninist system wasn’t all that thrilled about, you know, the whole “God” thing, so they were all like “maybe no to the religious holidays,” starting the original War On Christmas.  Except rather than waging war through angry social media outbursts at Starbucks (Comrades’ Coffee?), they literally stopped Christmas.  From the Russian Revolution in 1917 (officially still known as the Great October Socialist Revolution) until Stalin’s time, there was an official ban on all symbols of Christmas like trees, stars, and, well everything.

That didn’t go over so well with, well, anyone, and that was in the middle of one of the largest political purges in history. So, to help make amends, Stalin decided to reassign all of the secular components of Christmas to the New Year holiday. And so was born the “Yulka” (literally the “Yule Tree”) and “Ded Moroz,” otherwise known as “Grandfather Frost,” and his granddaughter/helper “Snegurochka” (literally, “Snow Maiden). This character was finally adapted by Central Asian Turkic people as “Ayaz Ata” (Frost Father) and “Kar Kyzy” (Snow Girl), and so was born the Soviet New Year holiday.

Nowadays here, Russian Christmas is still an official government holiday, but it’s reserved exclusively for the religious components of the holiday (the whole celebration of the birth of Jesus, without feasting and presents and trees).  New Year remains the biggest celebration, and because it maintains all of the traditions of trees, stars, gifts, and even a form of Santa, you can have your Christmas and celebrate it too.

In fact, one of my favorite parts of the presents and tree celebration being moved back to January 1st is that since I generally start playing seasonal music and decorating at the end of November, I get that much extra time to feel in the holiday spirit.  Unlike the US, where the decorations are all gone and it’s now “Valentine’s Day Season” everywhere from January 2 onward, in Kyrgyzstan the holiday decorations and the Yulkas all stay up all the way until the middle of January, keeping the cold snowy weather feeling magical that much longer.  Early January is the quietest time of year here, work-wise, so keeping the magic going is a welcome way to keep spirits up.

And, of course, it means I can keep watching Love Actually to my heart’s content.  Current count: 5.  And there’s still two more weeks of Christmas to go!

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful holiday season!