New Years is one of the two big holidays in Russia. Last Sunday we had a full schedule of meetings on Christmas; today church was just one hour so people could go home and spend the holiday with their families. The holiday isn't only New Year's Eve--New Year's Day is also a big day of celebration.
For the last week or so we've often heard the pop that precedes fireworks, but haven't always been in a place where we could see the sparkle part. It is legal for anyone to shoot fireworks here--no permit required. Part of that is because they don't have the cannons to shoot the fireworks high, so although we could often hear the pops and booms, we could seldom see anything more than the white flashes of light reflecting off buildings. We heard bursts of fireworks periodically through the evening Saturday, starting around 7:00ish. At midnight it was surprisingly quiet. We think maybe people were just getting set up, because by 12:10 there were fireworks going off everywhere. As usual, we couldn't see them all, but the thunder of fireworks going off all through the city rolled on for about 45 minutes. They echoed off the apartment buildings throughout the city, so the noise was multiplied. There is no professional show, nothing done by the city, just people having fun and delighting in the celebration. It continued through the night at a slower pace and started up again after sunset on Sunday. They love their fireworks, almost as much as their vodka. Our nephew Tyler had given us a hint of what to expect, but we had no idea it would go on all night. Tyler served his mission in Ukraine. He said his first year there they had a window break from all of the commotion.
Not only were there a lot of fireworks going off all night, but when we looked out our window we saw lots more people out on the streets than usual all throughout the night--including little kids with their parents. At church today one teenager said she was kind of tired because she was up until 8:00 am. That surprised us, but the Russians all said similar things. A 20-something man said at 4:00 they took their celebration out to the square so they could watch fireworks; our RS president (she's about our age) said she was up until 6:00; another young man said he hadn't been to bed yet in the new year.
When we stopped at the IKEA mall in Novosibirsk last week, the place was decorated to the hilt with all sorts of Christmas decorations. However, they don't have Christmas trees here; they're called New Year's trees. We got a kick out of the signs on their store windows that carried American goods: they said "Happy New Year and Merry Christmas" (in English). The New Year celebration is bigger than Christmas here, and comes first.
Russians like to think of themselves as spontaneous and don't plan in advance unless they have to. One of the members mentioned that last Friday was their version of Black Friday. Stores were jampacked with people shopping for food and gifts. Dave saw pallets of vodka in one store, and they were emptying out fast. When they celebrate here, it's often with vodka or similar strong alcohol, and we saw lots of people preparing to celebrate BIG time. Bottles and bottles and bottles. Some of the shoppers were already a little wobbly! The traditional midnight toast is with champagne. They even have special non-alcoholic champagne so the kids can be included in the toast. Then the adults celebrate the rest of the night with the stronger stuff.
An abundance of alcohol and fireworks. Doesn't sound like a great combination. We asked if there were a lot of injuries as a result. The answer was a polite "of course."
All the missionaries were told to be in their apartments at 4:00 pm for the rest of the night on both Saturday and Sunday evenings. We're guessing that's for safety reasons as well as the fact that no missionary work could be accomplished because of all the celebrating that goes on.
This week in Russia:
One nice thing about having such a small branch and the only one in the city--we don't flip-flop Sunday schedules. We will continue to meet at 11:00!
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