Happy New Year!

What a busy holiday season we have this year! We are celebrating 2 Christmases (sp?) and the New Year. Why two Christmases, well, let me explain. Before the Communist Revolution in 1917, the Russian calendar was shifted by 13 days as compared to the calendar in other countries. So after the Revolution the government of the Soviet Union decided to shift the calendar to correspond with the rest of the world. However, the Russian Orthodox Church leaders resisted the change and declared that the change in the calendar does not change the date of birth of the Christ. So since then Christmas is celebrated on January 7th.

In the Soviet Union religion was prohibited so people did not celebrate Christmas. Instead, a lot of Christmas traditions were transposed onto the New Year, such as, Father Frost (Santa Claus) comes and gives out presents at midnight on the 1st, fancy dinner gets cooked complete with a turkey or a duck, families get together to celebrate and exchange presents. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, many people returned to churches and started celebrating Christmas, but the New Year traditions remain. Nowadays, Christmas is celebrated on January 7th and no presents get exchanged, instead people go to church and get together for lunch or dinner.

You can read about our December Christmas in previous posts. Stephen, Daniel and I celebrated the New Year with my side of the family. We prepared lots of gifts for each member of the family, and, of course, Daniel received tons more gifts. My Mum and Grandmother went crazy! After this Christmas and New Year, we can open a toy store out of our apartment. Stephen and I really do not know what to do with all these toys, we do not have that much storage. And he still likes his old ones. Plus we wanted to keep the ones he does not play with anymore for the next baby. Thanks to the tip from Krystal, I learned how to do collages, here is our New Year in one picture: