E-mail: lar.javnova@yandex.ru Tel.: +7 (3854) 41-64-56
53, Vladimir Korolenko str., Biysk, 659333, Russian Federation
PhD in History, Associate Professor, Department of Historical-Legal and Social-Humanitarian Disciplines, Altai State Humanitarian-Pedagogical University named after V. M. Shukshin
This article is devoted to the traditional and modern aspects of Christmas and New Years calendar rituals as manifested in current practice. To this day, calendar rites have preserved many of their most ancient elements at all levels, verbal and applied. The article attempts a comparative semantic analysis of the old and new customs of the Christmas cycle and New Year rites in the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, as practiced mainly by descendants of Russian old-timers and settlers of Altai. It is based on interviews with different generations of Russians of Altai, with special attention paid to the plots and characters of Soviet mythology, to “Father Frost” in particular. It correlates traditional and new ritual attributes embodied in playful visual-spatial texts, i. e., Yuletide rituals and customs, including mummering (dress-up). The use of field materials collected in the villages of the Altai Territory and the city of Biysk, as well as information from periodicals, makes it possible to conduct historical and comparative analysis, determine the degree of adaptability of traditional ritual practices in the context of Soviet mythology, and to characterize new elements that appeared at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Further study of the semantic level of the holidays of the winter cycle will reveal cultural relationships, general trends, and local ethno-cultural manifestations of Christmas and New Year traditions among the different ethnic groups of the Altai Territory and will make it possible to understand the entire holiday cycle in a systematic way.
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