Christmas story

The tradition of the Christmas story, as well as all calendar literature in general, originates in the medieval mysteries , the subject and style of which was strictly determined by the sphere of their existence - the carnival religious presentation. A three-tier organization of space (hell - earth - paradise) and the general atmosphere of a miraculous change of the world or a hero passing through the storyline of all three stages of the universe passed from a mystery into a Christmas story. The traditional Christmas story has a bright and joyful ending, in which good always triumphs. The heroes of the work are in a state of spiritual or material crisis, for the resolution of which a miracle is required. The miracle is realized here not only as the intervention of higher powers, but also as a fluke, a successful coincidence, which in the paradigm of the values ​​of calendar prose are also seen as a sign from above. Often in the structure of the calendar story includes an element of fiction, but in the later tradition, focused on realistic literature, an important place is occupied by social themes.

In the second half of the XIX century, the genre was very popular. New Year's almanacs were selected, selected from works of the relevant subject, which soon contributed to the attribution of the Christmas story genre to the field of fiction . Fading interest in the genre occurred gradually, the beginning of the recession can be considered the 1910s.

The founder of the Christmas story genre on the scale of world literature is considered to be Charles Dickens , who in 1843 published The Christmas Carol Song about the old gloomy miser Ebeinizer Scrooge (he loves only his money and does not understand the joy of people celebrating Christmas , but changes his views after meetings with spirits ) ^[1] . In the subsequent works of the 1840s (“The Chimes” (1844), “The Cricket on the Hearth (1845),“ The Battle of Life ”(1846),“ The Haunted Man ”(1848)). In the 1850s, Dickens continued writing Christmas stories (often in collaboration with Wilkie Collins , publishing them in his magazines Household Words (from English - “Home Reading”) and (from English - “Round year ”). It was Dickens who linked the Christmas and social themes ^[2] , set the basic tenets of“ Christmas philosophy ”: the value of the human soul, the theme of memory and oblivion, love for“ man in sin ”, the theme of childhood. The Dickens tradition was perceived as European, and Russian literature and received further development.

The pattern of the Christmas story that has developed over time and has become traditional suggests a moral transformation of the hero, which should occur in three stages (reflecting the three steps of the universe); accordingly, the chronotope of such a story usually also has a three-level organization ^[3] .

A striking example of the genre in European literature is considered to be touching " Girl with matches " by Hans Christian Andersen ^[1] .

Celebrated from 25 (and sometimes from December 6, Nikola Winter ) December to January 6 ( old style ), together with Christmas , Epiphany , and starting with Peter I and the New Year , the Christmas tree is, in fact, the main of the traditional calendar holidays of Russia, and, accordingly, it was the Christmas (Christmas) story that became the most numerous and diverse genre of the calendar text. This holiday combined in itself the originally pagan Kolyada , Christian Christmas and baptism and the secular new year: all these traditions are closely intertwined, creating a very multi-layer Christmas semantics of the corresponding literary and folklore works. In particular, the time of the holy days (especially the second half of them, often called the “terrible” week, unlike the first - the “holy”) was considered by the people as a time of rampant demons and other evil spirits , which leads to the emergence of holy horror stories. Another steady motive is Christmas-related divinations , which, on the one hand, are associated with a set of ideas about fate, and, often, the motive of hope for the best, and on the other, were considered sinful and dangerous occupation. Therefore, folklore svyatochnye stories were often instructive in nature, they talked about how it should be, and how a person should not behave if he encounters infernal forces during Christmas time ^[4] . At the same time, the celebration of the Nativity was of a carnival character, where the unbridled joy, designed, according to the principle “how to meet a year, so you will spend it”, influence the future, combined with ritual disguise (see the mummers ). The youthful merrymaking of the youth was largely directed towards the choice of the bridegrooms and brides, the same matrimonial character was also carried out by girlish divination ^[5] .

The earliest work of Russian literature, the plot of which is closely connected with Christmas time and is based on the carnival nature of this holiday, is considered to be a cunning novel “ The Tale of Frol Skobeyev ” ^{[К 1]} . The story is fixed in writing, probably, in the time of Peter I. Poor nobleman Frol Skobeev (in one version of Skromrakhov, which is an obvious reference to buffoon, ), dressed in a woman's dress, penetrates to the girl's Christmas party, where (during the game, " amusing "wedding) seduces the daughter of the steward , whom he" marries "to marry. At the end of the 18th century, a revised version of this story, previously distributed exclusively by handwriting, was included in the collection “ The Adventures of Ivan of Gostiny Son ” by Ivan Novikov ^{[K 2]} under the name “Novgorod Girls' Christmas Evening, played in Moscow Wedding”. Sometimes the story of Karamzin “ Natalya, the boyar daughter ” is also related to the svyatochny, in which the son of the disgraced boyar marries the daughter of the Tsar's favorite, and ends with the king forgiving and bringing the kidnapped fiance to him, but with some plot similarity to “Frol” "And later examples of the genre, here there is no clear connection with Christmas time ^[7] .

The work entitled “Svyatochnye tales” first appeared in the Russian press in December 1826 in the magazine “ Moscow Telegraph ”. It was written by the publisher of the magazine Nikolay Polevoy . “Yule stories” by Polevoi reproduced the Russian tradition, which had already begun to be forgotten in the cities, when the old people told stories ( bylichka and former women ) on the Christmas evening, one way or another connected with this holiday. Periodicals , in particular literary journals , by their nature connected with the calendar , partially assumed the role played by the oral calendar literature in Russian folklore ^[8] .

A place for calendar literature was not found on the pages of many journals. Magazines, whose ideology is to a linear, rather than a cyclical perception of time , aimed at future changes, and not to preserve the tradition, where much attention was paid to news and new products. At the same time, the watershed here is in no way connected with the Westernism or Slavophil orientation of the publication. The calendar cycle, as a rule, is ignored by “ fat magazines ” published by those and others (although calendar literature is a bit closer for Slavophiles), but the mass magazines “for the people” turn to it, which, in particular, was “Moscow Telegraph” Field. The flowering of the Christmas story genre in Russia at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries is associated with an increase in the level of literacy and the number of such publications ^[9] .

The tradition of the oral calendar story was reproduced by Gogol in many of the “ Evenings on a farm near Dikanka . Christmas time in it is dedicated to "The Night Before Christmas ." This story is filled with many authentic, colorfully described ethnographic details of a national holiday. The intervention of evil forces here begins with the abduction of the hell stars and the month: a blizzard is added to the darkness in the world, aggravating the chaos. From this point on, fantastic events begin to occur in the story. However, if the intervention of infernal forces in oral tales often ends badly for the hero (at best, he gets rid of fright), here is a blacksmith (that is, the carrier of the “mystical” profession) and the artist Vakula triumphs over the devil. During the 19th century, this Gogol story acquired in Russia a reputation as a classic, exemplary Christmas story ^[10] .

The tradition of Dickens was perceived and partially rethought in Russia, thanks to which the theme of Christmas itself, surely, is included in the Russian svyatochny story, only indicated, in connection with the victory of good over evil, in Gogol, and, as a rule, absent from his contemporaries ^{[K 3] [2]} . If an English writer had an indispensable finale, the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, the moral rebirth of heroes, then in Russian literature there are often tragic finals. The specifics of the Dickensian tradition demanded a happy, even if not logical and implausible, finale, which affirmed the triumph of goodness and justice, reminiscent of the gospel miracle and creating a wonderful Christmas atmosphere.

Virtually any Christmas story is a miracle and the rebirth of the hero, but in Russian literature, the genre has acquired more realistic features. Russian writers usually give up magic, keeping the themes of childhood, love, forgiveness, social themes ^[1] . Gospel motifs and the main genre specificity of the Christmas story are combined with an enhanced social component. Among the most significant works of Russian writers written in the genre of the Christmas story is “ The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree ” by F. M. Dostoevsky , the cycle of nativity stories by N. S. Leskov , the Christmas stories by A. P. Chekhov (such as “ Children "," Boys ").

In Soviet literature, the svyatochny story loses its connection with the Christmas time and Christmas which became “religious prejudices” and turns into a New Year's story. “The Yolka in Sokolniki ”, an excerpt from Bonch-Bruevich ’s essay “ Three Assassinations of V.I. Lenin ” in 1930, became one of the first Soviet New Year texts, which became famous as an independent story for children. Here, Lenin, who arrived in 1919 on a children's tree, acts as a traditional Santa Claus (see also Leniniana ). Traditional themes of the Christmas story, such as happiness , childhood and the value of the family , are lifted by Gaidar 's story “ Chuk and Gek ” written in the tragic years of repression . Although it does not contain an obvious fantasy element, it is distinguished by a special, fairy-tale atmosphere that brings it closer to traditional Christmas stories ^{[12] [13]} .

However, the very phrase “ Christmas” (or Christmas ) story in the Soviet press was used exclusively in an ironic sense, to denote something very sentimental and / or far from real life. Classical works of Christmas themes, such as Chekhov 's story “ Vanka ”, began to refer to children's literature , literary scholars emphasized their social component. The revival of the traditions of the genre begins in the late 1980s, reprints of Christmas stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as new works with the subtitle “Christmas story,” begin to appear in print, and collections of such stories are published ^{[14] [15]} .

As an example of a modern Christmas text, one of the most famous stories of Ludmila Petrushevskaya’s “ Black Coat ” can be considered, in which the heroine, abandoned by her fiancé and decided to commit suicide , falls into a strange interworld , where she receives the last chance to change her fateful decision. Although the story allows for a different reading: in the range of genres from ballad to childish horror story , there is a rather noticeable roll call with Andersen's “Girl with Matches”, starting with the fact that both there and there, the name of the heroine remains unnamed, and ending with the box with a few matches, the key part of the plot, symbolizing salvation. The absence of an explicit chronological reference to Christmas (or, in the modernized version, the new year) in the Black Coat (here it is said simply about winter) is quite characteristic of modern Christmas prose, often avoiding such specificity. At the same time, Petrushevskaya has all the other characteristic features of the genre: a miracle, a moral lesson, a happy ending and the moral rebirth of the heroine, as well as the narrator, as an independent instance ^[16] . In the story “Boy New Year” ^[17] , which has the subtitle “current tale” Lyudmila Petrushevskaya turned to the genre of the Christmas story explicitly. Here its heroes, “ little people ”, by their indifference, themselves perform a small miracle, not allowing trouble to happen ^[18] .

A special group of svyatochnyh stories in the pre-revolutionary literature were "scary" or "epiphany stories", representing a kind of gothic horror literature . The origins of this type of story lie in the Christmas-related beliefs and the reflections on them. As an early example of this kind of literature, one can mention the ballad by V. A. Zhukovsky “ Svetlana ” ^{[5] [19]} , Tatyana ’s dream in Pushkin’s novel “ Eugene Onegin ”. In his early stories, Chekhov humorously played up the conventions of this genre (“ Terrible Night ”, “ Night at the Cemetery ”). For more serious examples of the genre are " Devil " and " Victim " by A. M. Remizov .

• Dushechkina Ye. V. Russian Christmas story: the formation of the genre. - SPSU , 1995. - 256 p. - ISBN 5-87403-049-2 .
• Mineralova I. G. Children's literature: A manual for students of higher educational institutions. - M .: Vlados, 2002. - 176 p. - ISBN 5-691-00697-5 .
• Nikolaev S. Yu. Paschal text in Russian literature of the XIX century. - M .: Litera, 2004. - 360 p. - ISBN 5-98091-013-1 .

• Dushechkina E. V. Svyatochny story // Art. - The first of September, 2007. - № 23 .
• Shigarova Yu. V. From Dickens to Gogol. New Year's traditions in literature // Arguments and Facts - StoLichnost . - 2013. - No. 19 (49) for December 18 . - p . 4 .