So beloved by all, the most cheerful and beautiful holiday New Year did not always exist. The history of the appearance of the custom to celebrate the onset of the new year tells about the long path that the holiday had to go through.
The New Year was born about 25 centuries ago in Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) and immediately firmly entered the measured life of its inhabitants. And then he was celebrated no less rapidly and cheerfully than now. But how did he get to Europe? According to scientists, the Jews who were in Babylonian captivity liked the holiday so much that they included it in the Bible. From them, the New Year tradition passed to the Greeks, and then - stepped into Western Europe.
In Russia, the celebration of the New Year was ordered by the great reformer Peter I, having issued his probably most cheerful and kind decree of January 1, 1700. And it was written in that decree: "In honor of the New Year, to make ornaments from fir trees, to amuse children, to ride sleds from the mountains. And adult people do not have drunkenness and massacre - there are enough other days for that." By the same decree, the tsar ordered to celebrate the New Year's Eve as follows: to burn bonfires, launch fireworks, congratulate each other, decorate houses with coniferous trees and branches.
Of course, the Russian people, who love rampant fun, gladly obeyed the decree. Carnivals and masquerades rushed across Russia. What is more interesting, in the Russian houses they did not put Christmas trees, but simply branches of spruce or pine, decorated them with sweets, fruits and nuts in golden paper. And the Christmas trees themselves were put on a holiday at first only in the houses of the Germans living in St. Petersburg. And only at the end of the 19th century did Christmas trees deservedly become the main decoration in city and village houses, and in the 20th century they were already an inseparable attribute of all winter holidays until 1918.
In the revolutionary difficult years, few people dressed up a Christmas tree in their home; moreover, this custom was condemned by the new government. But in 1935, the Christmas tree became a new symbol not of Christmas, but of the New Year in the Soviet country. The red five-pointed star replaced the Bethlehem star, and according to the decree of I.V. Stalin, together with Santa Claus and traditional New Year's trees, our country met 1935 from the Nativity of Christ.
And to this day, every year on the night of January 1, gifts are hidden under the green beauty, and the expectation of a miracle makes this holiday the most beloved.
