General Information about Item:
- Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, religious custom
- Language: English with some Russian
- Country of Origin: Russia
- Informant: V.A.
- Date Collected: November 13, 2020
Informant Data:
- V.A. is ~50 years old, and she is a professor at Dartmouth College. She was born in the Soviet Union, which is now Russia, in the city of Moscow. Currently, she is religious and celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday; however, when she was growing up in the atheist Soviet environment, there was no Christmas whatsoever.
Contextual Data:
Historical & Religious Context
- After the Russian Revolution, the Communists took the secular traditions of Christmas and passed them onto the New Year, which was celebrated as a secular holiday. Christmas trees, gifts, and food became New Year’s trees, gifts, and food. The religious traditions of Christmas were discontinued, and Christmas dishes associated with religious ceremonies were no longer prepared, at least not openly. After the end of the Communist regime, Christmas returned, but, nowadays, it is solely observed in Russia as a church holiday rather than a commercial holiday like in the US. The gift-giving tradition and original Christmas dishes are still part of New Year’s celebrations.
Cultural Context
- Russian salads are unlike American salads. They are often warm dishes that feature a rich assortment of ingredients such as meat, seafood, root vegetables, and various types of dressing.
Social Context
- In Russia, families hold a New Year’s feast as a replacement for the pre-revolution Christmas feast. The family or community gathers for a large meal consisting of mainly secular dishes, many invented during the Soviet era. In addition, the New Year is celebrated by champagne and other revelries.
Item:
- Kutja (Кутья) is a pudding-like dish made using some variety of grain, typically wheat berries or rice, cooked with honey. Sometimes, other ingredients such as nuts and raisins are also added. Traditionally, before the Soviet era, it was served on Christmas Eve as a celebration for Jesus’s birthday. It was also eaten after funeral ceremonies at the church to commemorate the souls of the departed.
- Salat Olivier (салат оливьер) is a rich salad consisting of chicken, potatoes, mayonnaise, pickles, carrots, onions, and tinned peas that every Russian family prepares for the New Year. It was invented during the Soviet era and remains a popular salad dish to this day.
Transcript of Interview Clip:
W.W. (collector): Thank you so much. So feel free to go ahead and talk about the item you’re sharing as well as any relevant social or cultural context related to the item.
V.A. (informant): Yeah, I think I want to say that so my own way of celebrating Christmas has changed because when I was a child, and when I was, when I was a young adult, I didn’t… when I was a child, I did not celebrate Christmas, because nobody did. It was the end of the Soviet Union. And during the Soviet times, people did not celebrate Christmas, at least openly. And the whole holiday was replaced by the celebration of the New Year.
After the revolution, yeah, that was a deal of the Communists, they just took the traditions of Christmas and passed them onto the New Year, they kind of made this a non-religious holiday. So the Christmas tree became a New Year tree. Christmas gifts became New Year gifts. And Christmas food became New Year food. So people that before the revolution, they used to think that traditional dishes were making a goose or a duck, roast duck or roast goose, as, because meat were… because, why that? Yes, well, for once, the celebration of Christmas is preceded by Christmas Lent, by a fast, a pretty long, fast like a month long when people don’t eat meat. So eating meat was like a way to celebrate after a very long period of not eating it. So that, that was a traditional dish. And another traditional dish also that that also has religious symbolism was what is called kutja (Кутья). And that was some kind of grain like rice or wheat grains cooked with honey. And that is something that is associated with remembering the dead. So this is a traditional dish, for example, when somebody dies and after you give this religious ceremonial saying goodbye to the person at the church, that is the food that you eat. So it was sometimes served during the Christmas, although it is like a birthday. Yes, a birthday of Jesus, still it, it has this association of paying tribute to the dead people and kind of acknowledging that they’re still there. Yeah. So, but that is that food, because of its very religious association, it was not passed into the celebration of the New Year.
So when I was growing up, what people would do for the New Year that at that time replaced Christmas would be some kinds of new Soviet dishes like for example, something which we call salat olivier (салат оливьер), a salad, which is not really a salad but like a warm salad, with chicken, with mayonnaise, with potatoes, etc. Like some very rich salad that people traditionally make for the New Year. That’s another, another thing that people always have for the New Year is champagne.
And so Christmas was totally lost. I didn’t celebrate it. And then I became religious at some point in my life and when Christmas was returned, after the Communist regime was over, and now the new Russia actively promotes religion. Yeah, so people started celebrating it again. But it remained where it was. It’s a church holiday. So what I’m trying to say is that people still make ducks and geese for the New Year, they still make the salad with chicken and potatoes, and they still drink some champagne for the New Year. But celebration of the Christmas is limited to religious families. It is nothing whatever like it is in the States, it’s not a commercial holiday. Nobody’s giving gifts. Nobody’s… all the celebration is around the New Year. So in a way, there is no Christmas, traditional Christmas dishes, now.
Collector’s Comments:
- I enjoyed learning about the history behind the dishes. It is fascinating that many Christmas traditions were passed on to the New Year and continue to live on. During the Cultural Revolution in China, religious practices, especially Buddhist ones, were also labelled as superstition and purged in favor of atheism.
Collector’s Name: Winston Wang