New Year is a time of traditions. Especially lately, when we manage to escape from the reality that flies over us. We want the familiar, the end-to-end, the anchored. Christmas tree house with dad holding the sign “Glass!” Take the toys out of the old box that says. We remember how we once decorated a Christmas tree with cotton wool, and we tell this (the same thing every year!) to our children. “Blue Light”, a ringing clock, a bowl of Olivier – these are all necessary attributes that grip our last nerve cell.
We sacredly honor traditions because we once saw for ourselves how our parents did it. And even my Generation Z children have already gotten used to the fact that they need to watch “Enjoy Your Bathroom…” before the New Year, and maybe in 15 years they will tell their children about this movie themselves, like me. my grandmother told me about the premiere of Eisenstein.
The New Year is not just a time for annual reports and corporate events. This is a time when traditional values are tested for strength. When it is important to ensure continuity, “from father to son” and “inherited from grandfathers”. And right now there is no more important question for Olivier than whether to put an apple or not.
Maybe this Frenchman – Lucien Olivier, who became the father of the main Russian salad due to a terrible misunderstanding – looks down on us and thinks: “I came up with this with hazel grouse, crab necks, pressed caviar, and I was ready for you to somehow change the recipe instead of hazel grouse – black grouse, instead of pressed caviar – red caviar. But an apple? How? From where?”
No one remembers how the debate began about whether to add grated apples to Olivier. According to one version, this phrase about the salad was said by the heroine Svetlana Nemolyaeva in “Office Romance” when the heroine wanted to fool Basilashvili’s wife. According to another version, this apple appeared out of desperation in the winter when it was impossible to get fresh cucumbers. The main thing is that every winter, on New Year’s Eve, desperate discussions begin on this issue. And everyone seems to know that instead of asking about apples and Olivier, it is better to ask the mother of two when they are on their third.
Your author still remembers the time when anyone asking about an apple could be left without Olivier. However, although it has remained on the agenda in recent years and still excites minds and creates dozens of memes, I cannot help but notice that this issue is not so urgent anymore.
Those who support traditionalism say, “We did not create tradition, and it is not up to us to break it,” and take the apple from Olivier.
Followers of the “new wave” answer them: “But any tradition was once someone’s revolutionary decision,” and smashes an apple into the Olivier salad.
And here we cannot agree with the innovators.
How long has the tradition of celebrating the New Year on January 1 been around? From a historical perspective, not so much. There is even an exact date. Peter I issued a decree on December 20, 1699. And the new year came on January 1, 1700, and before that it came on September 1. Previously, March 1 was considered the beginning of the year.
The first “Blue Light” appeared in 1962, which, by the way, became a “winter” holiday in the spring and only then; and only in the late 70s of the last century did they start watching “Enjoy Your Bath…”.
The tradition of the head of state giving a New Year’s speech, as we are used to seeing on television, emerged in 1985 during the reign of Mikhail Gorbachev.
All of these events are historically insignificant, but we still give them “tradition” status because most of us cannot remember a time when these events did not exist. Maybe the same thing will happen with Olivier: Conservatives will be outraged and get used to it.
Or perhaps we have seen many other – real – wars that were terrible and tragic in their inevitability. And looking at their background, the “apple war on Olivier” seems so insignificant and insignificant that you don’t want to waste time and energy on it.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.