Santa’s secret. How did Snegurochka become an orphan and who are her parents? Associate Professor of Moscow State Pedagogical University Asonova explained why Snegurochka is Father Frost’s granddaughter and not his daughter 08:08

When did Santa Claus appear?

The modern image of Father Frost appeared in 1937 – then, after the celebration was banned for several years, the first New Year tree with his participation was organized in the building of the Moscow House of Unions.

However, the character was not actually as he is known today. It has several premises. One of them is Moroz Ivanovich, who first appeared in the 19th century in Vladimir Odoevsky’s collection “Tales of Grandfather Iriney” (1840). This was the first written mention of the image of Moroz, a specialist in children’s literature, head of the laboratory of sociocultural educational practices at the Moscow City Pedagogical University (MSPU), associate professor Ekaterina Asonova told socialbites.ca.

He didn’t look much like the character modern kids know at the time. So it had nothing to do with the New Year, on the contrary, it was a representative of the winter season. Thanks to the well, the children found themselves in an icy country, where Moroz Ivanovich began to test them and gave them various jobs. If you do this well, Moroz Ivanovich will reward you by acting as a fair educator and mentor.

“I am Moroz Ivanovich! The old man is so tough! I know what you need.
You will have a bucket and another reward!
Just serve me, my dull gray hair.
Prepare dinner for me, sew my shirt, sweep the floors and fluff the feather bed!
In the meantime, I will fill the clouds with snow to the top!”

(VF Odoevsky “The Tales of Grandfather Irenaeus”)

“Later, 20 years later, the image of Moroz appears in Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem “Red Nose Don” (1863); We all remember the lines from this poem about the governor Moroz wandering around his territory. “It’s clear that this is not a gift-giving breed for New Year’s or Christmas,” says Asonova.

So, neither in the 40s nor in the 60s of the 19th century was there any image of Frost associated with Christmas. But thanks to German settlers, there was still a tradition in Russia to give children gifts associated with the image of St. Nicholas the Pleasant on this holiday. It was then decided to create our own donor analogue.

“The interesting thing is that the prototypes of Santa Claus were initially associated not with winter and the New Year, but with thaw, that is, with the transition to spring. This is due to the fact that this holiday is also quite young and the peasants do not particularly celebrate it, hence the connection between Frost and a completely different phenomenon and ideas about cold and winter. In general, it is more logical for the New Year to be associated with Winter as a character. For example, the Brothers Grimm has a fairy tale about Mother Snowstorm; When a bird knocks over a feather bed, it snows. But history ordered otherwise and we caught Santa Claus,” said the expert.

Already in the 1910s, Santa Claus began to appear “alive” on Christmas trees and pre-revolutionary postcards. After the revolution, the Soviets began to fight against old traditions by banning Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Soviet propaganda, in the fight against church superstitions and traditions of celebrating the main winter holidays, deliberately invented the myth that Santa Claus is an evil pagan god requiring sacrifices. This is allegedly why toys are hung on Christmas trees as a nod to the past when victims played the role of toys.

“The story of Santa Claus is wonderful. We have two separate characters from fairy tales and legends who act as guardians of frost. One is Moroz Voevoda by Nekrasov, and the second is Moroz Ivanovich Odoyevsky. They united into a single character, but we do not know other, more archaic images, that is, this is a relatively young character, only a hundred years old. An interesting variation on the theme of Frost, the guardian of winter, was created by Samuil Marshak in the fairy tale play “Twelve Months”, where winter is represented not by one character, like all other months, but by three characters. year,” Asonova explained.

A very interesting legend about the appearance of Father Frost, a kind donor and even protector of children, was invented by modern writers Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak. The name of the book is “The True Story of Santa Claus”. Like many other Christmas stories, this tale is best read before the New Year and during the New Year period.

The resurrection of Santa Claus and the theft of someone’s grandchild

As mentioned, in the 1930s, Santa Claus returned. Then Pavel Postyshev, a member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, published an article in the Pravda newspaper in which he proposed to organize a New Year’s celebration for children with a Christmas tree.

All over the country, they began to celebrate the New Year, reimagined with Father Frost and the Snow Maiden. This was done so that the inhabitants of the USSR felt like a single people with common traditions.

“The image developed further with the emergence of the new Soviet state, where absolutely everything was new. When we turned 30, we realized that not taking any holidays would be bad. Any group of people must have something in common, some kind of collective traditions, this was well understood in the USSR, then the idea of ​​​​creating the owner of the New Year and the holiday arose. “This is how the figure of the modern Father Frost and his granddaughter Snegurochka appeared,” Asonova said.

So why Snegurochka? According to the expert, the prototype of the girl was a character from an old fairy tale about a childless pair of grandparents who made a snow girl and named her Snow Maiden, but in the summer the girl melted.

Alexander Ostrovsky described his interpretation of history in the play “The Snow Maiden” (1873). In it, Frost and his wife Vesna-Krasna had a daughter named Snegurochka.

“For sixteen years I’ve been just a joke
And entertaining my fickle anger,
It has become changeable and strange
Old grandfather flirts with Frost,
A gray-haired joker; and from that moment on
I am in captivity with the old one. Man
It’s always like this: give me some willpower,
And it’ll take it all, that’s how it goes
From ancient times. I want to leave the gray one
But the thing is, the old man and I have a daughter –
snow maiden”
(AN Ostrovsky, “The Snow Maiden”)

However, such an alliance angered the god Yarilo and he killed the girl with sunlight, melting her. This image of an ice girl began to circulate in various children’s works, including Christmas ones. In them, children often found the Snow Maiden in the snow on Christmas Eve and brought her home to warm her by the fire, but she always melted.

The names Moroz and Snegurochka have never been seen together, except in Ostrovsky’s play, but they did appear together on the first Soviet Christmas tree in 1937.

“We can say that Santa Claus took or “stole” the Snow Maiden from another fairy tale. Her image itself is harsh and scary, so the figure of the Snow Maiden was introduced, which “softened” Father Frost. She was included in the script as an intermediary between Santa Claus and children: Methodologists believed that a girl character would instill more confidence in children. Often, Soviet creators took two unrelated characters and combined them,” Asonova explained.

And the question of why Snegurochka is Frost’s granddaughter, and not his daughter, is easy to answer: she is too young.

“The explanation for why Snegurochka is a granddaughter and not a daughter lies on the surface. Frost is a little old to have such a young girl. Even in the fairy tale, we perceive the Snow Maiden as her granddaughter. Fairy tales always say “once upon a time, there was a grandfather, there was a woman”, and although it is actually a symbol of poverty and distress, people perceive it as a grandfather and grandmother. “Therefore, family ties have an effect on age perception, there is no other reason,” he said.

According to Asonova, these characters never had any other relatives. However, it is possible that their image will change again in the future and they will start a family.