As the Orthodox Church sticks to the ancient Julian calendar, it celebrates Christmas on January 7 (which is December 25 according to the Julian calendar). Russian Christmas remains a strictly religious holiday—it has nothing to do with the shopping binge, Western style. Here is some advice on celebrating Christmas, Russian style.
The main traditions of celebrating Christmas Eve were established as early as the 4th century AD. As Russia accepted Christianity as its official religion in the 10th century (although there had been many Christians in the country for centuries before that), the Russians too started celebrating Christmas.
Russian Christmas Traditions: Celebrating Christmas Eve
Traditionally, Christmas Eve is a quiet and pious event, finalizing the forty-day Christmas fast. The Christmas Fast, which starts November 28, is more relaxed compared to the other three yearly major fasts in the Orthodox tradition: for the first half of it, there are only three strictly vegan days in the week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On the other days, fish and vegetable oil are allowed, but all animal products, like dairy and meat, and also alcohol, are completely excluded. After Nicholmas on December 19, fish isn't allowed, either.
The Christmas Fast culminates in Christmas Eve of January 6 when the believers don't eat or drink anything at all until the first star shows up in the sky. The reason behind this tradition is that in the ancient church of the first Christians, the Christmas service started in the early evening, and only after it the faithful were allowed to break the fast. These days, the Christmas service starts at midnight of January 6/7, so an evening meal before it is a good idea, even though it still has to be completely vegan.
In the days of old, children usually informed their parents about the first star as they ran back home from their outdoor games of skating, snowballing and tobogganing. Then the whole family would sit down to a humble vegan feast, preceded by a round of special prayers. Praying is a time-consuming business in the Russian Orthodoxy, as a pious household should spend at least an hour daily in prayer.
Families usually invited a lonely neighbor or a poor passerby to share their Christmas Eve meal with: you never knew, the homeless beggar could be the Lord himself. The tradition demanded to only speak of good things and discuss good deeds at the Christmas Eve table.
Celebrating Christmas Eve with Traditional Russian Christmas Eve Foods
Although most believers make sure the Christmas Eve table contains twelve dishes in the memory of the twelve Apostles, there are only two dishes officially dictated by the Church for the Christmas Eve feast. One is kutia (koo-t'yAH): an ancient funeral dish, which opens the feast reminding us of Christ's death and sacrifice.
Kutia is plain porridge made with any available cereal, like oats, rye, wheat, rice, or even sweet peas.These days, the most common choice is rice. Once cooked and chilled, it is then mixed with a sweet sauce made of water mixed with honey or sugar with the addition of various nuts, dried fruit (especially raisins) or even fruit jellies. Often, poppy milk is also added (Delicious! Soak some poppy seeds in boiled water for a day or two until they're soft, drain, then crash them in a mortar with a pounder until they ooze white liquid and pour the resulting mess into your porridge.)
Kutia is then heaped into a nice bowl and decorated with raisins, fruit jellies and walnut halves: preferably, making Christmas-themed shapes.
The other obligatory Orthodox Christmas Eve dish is vzvar (meaning "boil-up") which closes the feast: a sweet drink made of dried fruit and honey boiled together in water. Vzvar is a traditional Russian birth ritual drink, served to celebrate a new arrival, so it symbolizes the arrival of Baby Jesus into the world. It contains any dried fruit available to old Russians: apples, pears, sour cherries (not regular cherries because they don't grow in Russia), prunes, currants, raspberries, gooseberries and raisins. Honey is used a lot in the Christmas Eve meal as it symbolizes the sweetness of the spiritual gifts Christians received with the arrival of Jesus Christ.
Food Tips and Ideas for a Russian Christmas Eve Meal
Other dishes can include vegan beetroot soup (borsch) or vegan potluck (solyanka) offered with single-serving vegetable pies, especially cabbage, potato, or mushroom ones (the pie dough should be vegan, too, made with flour, yeast, water, salt and a tad of vegetable oil). Please note that the Orthodox church regulations forbid fish on Christmas Eve (no matter how many layman websites say otherwise), but allow vegetable oil and red wine in moderation.
Various vegetable starters and salads follow the soup—mainly vegetable preserves in brine, like gherkins, mushrooms or tomatoes, as well as potato salads with vegan dressings based on vegetable oil, or root vegetables. The best choice of vegetable oil is unrefined sunflower oil which is the ingredient that gives Russian savory starters their typical taste.
Russian Sauerkraut is the queen of the Russian table at Christmas Eve, served with cranberries, cumin, shredded carrot, onion rings, and sprinkled with unrefined sunflower oil. The recipe for it is slightly different from traditional European ones: the Russian Sauerkraut must be fresh-looking and crisp, not soggy,which is achieved by using special frost-resistant varieties of cabbage and storing it at subzero temperatures.
It can be followed by more pies or porridge, especially buckwheat with fried onions and fried mushrooms, seasoned with unrefined sunflower oil (seriously yummy!). For dessert, fruit pies, cookies like gingerbread and honeybread are followed by fresh and dried fruit and more nuts. There are no strict rules about which particular dishes to use, apart from kutia and vzvar mentioned earlier.
There is no such thing as traditional Russian Christmas Eve bread. While many English-language websites claim pagach to be Russian Christmas bread, it is in fact Slovak—nothing to do with the Russian culture. In Russia, pies were traditional winter food because they were hot and more filling. I have to admit that the amount of wrong information about Russian Christmas on the Web is above human imagination.
All food served on Christmas Eve had to be tepid, so that the hostess didn't have to rush to and fro warming the dishes up, but could sit down and enjoy a spiritual conversation. The meal ended with more prayers before going to the midnight service which would last until 4 or 5 a.m.
(For information on a traditional Russian Christmas Day feast, see this article)
More Christmas Eve Traditions and Children's Games
On Christmas Eve, children in rural Russia also used to go starring: walk door to door with a tin star mounted on a pole, singing carols in exchange for treats. These days, we try to restore this tradition, together with many other long-forgotten Russian customs.
Please note that these days, Russian children (and adults) never get presents for Christmas. In 1935, the gift-giving tradition, together with some other Christmas customs, was moved to the New Year's day, so now Father Frost visits Russian kids invisibly on New Year's Eve while they are asleep, leaving surprise gifts under the tree or under children's pillows.
Sources:
- Ortodox Meals (in Russian) Orthodoxy.ru (last accessed Nov 27, 2010)
- Russian Orthodox Cuisine. Christmas Eve ( in Russian) Supercook.ru (last accessed Nov 27, 2010)
- How the Orthodox Believers Celebrate Christmas Eve (in Russian) newsru.com, January 6, 2010 (last accessed Nov 27, 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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