A couple of years ago, a desperate American mother sought help from a Russian folklore site. "My kids got a Christmas assignment to tell the Russian legend of Babushka and the Three Wise Men. But we can't find the Russian original of it anywhere! Can you help us please?"
The request puzzled the Russian folklorists a lot. "Babushka? A Russian legend? Never heard about it."
Nativity Folk Stories Don't Exist in the Russian Orthodox Christian Tradition
Sorry if it disappoints anyone, but the story of Babushka is a literary creation by an American author, not a Russian folk tale. There is no Russian-language original of it ever recorded in Russia. The story itself doesn't exist in Russian oral culture. Here's why:
Nativity stories like the three wise men tales don't belong in Russian oral lore. Unlike Catholicism which indeed created quite a few beautiful legends based on the Nativity story, Russian Christians never used Nativity as folk tale material. For Christianity-based Russian folk tales, the most common plot lines are those based on lives of saints, when various miraculous events typical of hagiography are woven into a folk tale's plot.
Also, by the mid-19th century, wide folklore research studies in Russia had recorded more or less every version of every folk tale known to the Russians. In 1855, leading folklorist Alexander Afanasiev published his eight-volume collection of 600 Russian folk and fairy tales (Brothers Grimm's complete collection contained only 211 stories). While A. Afanasiev's collection boasts dozens of popular tales Russian kids still love and know by heart, the story of Babushka is just not in it.
Russian Kids in the Tsarist Russia Never Received Presents for Christmas
There is another proof of the fact that the tale of Babushka and the Three Wise Men couldn't be Russian. The thing is, until the mid-19th century, the Russian children never received gifts for Christmas, period. Gift-giving simply wasn't part of the Russian Christmas tradition then, so this legend couldn't appear before 1845.
Starting 1845 though, German culture and traditions became hugely popular in Russia, including the custom of Christmas gift-giving, encouraged even further by the popularity of classic German author Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann with his Nutcracker tale.
And even then, only the children from upper and educated middle-class Russian families -- a mere few percent of all Russian kids -- received Christmas gifts in the short period between 1845 and 1914. In 1914, the First World War prompted the Russian government to ban all things German, including children's Christmas parties. But village children and lower-class town kids in Tsarist Russia, raised in the strict Orthodox Christian tradition, didn't even know that in some other countries children received Christmas presents.
Babushka and The Three Kings – a "Russian" Legend or Literary Myth?
The closest thing to the "Russian" legend of Babushka is the famous Italian legend of La Befana, the old lady who indeed refused to join the three wise men on their journey to see Baby Jesus so now she wanders around the world giving gifts to kids and hoping to find the Christ child. Indeed, in Italy it is Befana who fills children's stockings on January 5, the date that's very close to the Russian Orthodox Christmas of January 7, which could play some role in this confusion. Also, one of the names the Italians give to La Befana is La Vecchia – "the old woman." Translate "old woman" into Russian, and you get "babushka", or "grandmother".
The author of this article did some research trying to unearth the roots of this Babushka misunderstanding. It seems that in 1907, American writer and poetess Edith Matilda Thomas was the first to write an inspired and powerful poem Baboushka: a Russian Legend.
No one can tell now how she came up with the idea. It's possible that she had come across a Russian children's book of Christmas tales and mistook the Italian legend published in it for an original Russian story. Alternatively, the Russian Babushka could have well been a Befana-inspired (or plagiarized, as I'd personally call it) literary tale by a long-forgotten petty Russian writer published in some obscure 19th-century Russian penny almanac. We can only guess because in Russia there's no record of the Babushka story.
In any case, Edith M. Thomas's charismatic tale proved popular and at least seven other English-language authors followed suit, creating their independent literary versions of this non-existent "Russian folk tale." That's how these days the American Christmas culture boasts a "Russian legend" that only exists in English-speaking America.
The Russian Children Have Never Heard About the Gift-bringing Babushka
The Russian children have never heard of Babushka, either. The claim that they love this non-existent character that's supposed to bring them gifts comes from English-speaking Web writers who never saw the Russian original of the story simply because the Russian original does not exist. It just shows one how little it takes to spread wrong information these days: all you need is some inadequate research and good copy-and-paste skills, resulting in dozens of websites repeating the same story that was false to begin with.
Although Russian kids don't have Babushka to bring them gifts, it's Father Christmas, a.k.a. Father Frost, who does it. Father Frost usually appears with his beautiful and kindhearted granddaughter Snegurochka, or Snow Maiden, who assists him in his travels. Between the two of them, they've been doing the job nicely for the last hundred or so years. So this year, maybe, Babushka can help them bring gifts to American kids?
Additional Reading:
Russian Folk Tales 1916 by Leonard Arthur Magnus (translator). Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series (last accessed Nov 26, 2010).
On Folk Tales of Russia, Russia-InfoCentre, Aug 9, 2007 (last accessed Nov 26, 2010).
Irene Woodhead - Irene Woodhead is a bilingual English/Russian freelance writer and translator. After years of working as a professional opera/jazz singer, ...
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