On Christmas days, the whole world, childishly frozen in anticipation of a miracle, looks with hope and trepidation into the winter sky: when will that same Star appear? We are preparing Christmas gifts for our nearest and dearest, friends and acquaintances. Nikea also prepared a wonderful gift for its friends - a series of Christmas books.

Several years have passed since the release of the first book in the series, but every year its popularity is only growing. Who doesn't know these cute books with a Christmas pattern that have become an attribute of every Christmas? This is always a timeless classic.

Topelius, Kuprin, Andersen

Nicaea: a Christmas gift

Odoevsky, Zagoskin, Shakhovskoy

Nicaea: a Christmas gift

Leskov, Kuprin, Chekhov

Nicaea: a Christmas gift

It would seem that what could be interesting? All works are united by one theme, but once you start reading, you immediately understand that each new story is a new story, unlike all the others. The exciting celebration of the holiday, many destinies and experiences, sometimes difficult life trials and an unchanging belief in goodness and justice - this is the basis of the works of Christmas collections.

We can safely say that this series set a new direction in book publishing and rediscovered an almost forgotten literary genre.

Tatyana Strygina, compiler of Christmas collections The idea belongs to Nikolai Breev, general director of the publishing house “Nikea” - He is the inspirer of the wonderful campaign “Easter Message”: on the eve of Easter, books are distributed... And in 2013 I wanted to make a special gift for readers - collections of classics for spiritual reading , for the soul. And then “Easter Stories of Russian Writers” and “Easter Poems of Russian Poets” came out. Readers immediately liked them so much that it was decided to release Christmas collections as well.”

Then the first Christmas collections were born - Christmas stories by Russian and foreign writers and Christmas poems. This is how the “Christmas Gift” series turned out, so familiar and beloved. From year to year, the books were reprinted, delighting those who did not have time to read everything last Christmas or wanted to buy as a gift. And then Nikeya prepared another surprise for readers - Christmas collections for children.

We began to receive letters from readers asking us to publish more books on this topic, shops and churches expected new products from us, people wanted new things. We simply could not disappoint our reader, especially since there were still many unpublished stories. Thus, first a children’s series was born, and then Christmas stories,” recalls Tatyana Strygina.

Vintage magazines, libraries, funds, card indexes - all year round the editors of Nikeya work to present their readers with a gift for Christmas - a new collection of the Christmas series. All the authors are classics, their names are well-known, but there are also not so famous authors who lived in the era of recognized geniuses and published with them in the same magazines. This is something that has been tested by time and has its own “quality guarantee”.

Reading, searching, reading and reading again,” Tatiana laughs. — When in a novel you read a story about how New Year and Christmas are celebrated, often this does not seem to be the main point in the plot, so you don’t focus your attention on it, but when you immerse yourself in the topic and begin to purposefully search, these descriptions, one might say, come on their own in your hands. Well, in our Orthodox heart the story of Christmas immediately resonates, is immediately imprinted in our memory.”

Another special, almost forgotten genre in Russian literature is Christmas stories. They were published in magazines, and publishers specially ordered stories from famous authors. Christmastide is the period between Christmas and Epiphany. Christmas stories traditionally feature a miracle, and the heroes joyfully do the difficult and wonderful work of love, overcoming obstacles and often the machinations of “evil spirits.”

According to Tatyana Strygina, in Christmas literature there are stories about fortune-telling, about ghosts, and incredible afterlife stories...

These stories are very interesting, but it seemed that they did not fit the festive, spiritual theme of Christmas, did not fit with other stories, so I just had to put them aside. And then we finally decided to publish such an unusual collection - “Scary Christmas Stories.”

This collection includes Christmas “horror stories” from Russian writers, including little-known ones. The stories are united by the theme of Christmas time - mysterious winter days when miracles seem possible, and the heroes, having suffered fear and calling on everything holy, dispel the obsession and become a little better, kinder and braver.

The theme of a scary story is very important from a psychological point of view. Children tell each other horror stories, and sometimes adults also like to watch horror films. Every person experiences fear, and it is better to experience it together with a literary hero than to get into a similar situation yourself. It is believed that scary stories compensate for the natural feeling of fear, help overcome anxiety and feel more confident and calm,” emphasizes Tatyana.

I would like to note that the exclusively Russian theme is harsh winter, a long journey on a sleigh, which often becomes deadly, snowy roads, snowstorms, snowstorms, Epiphany frosts. The trials of the harsh northern winter provided vivid subjects for Russian literature.

The idea for the collection “New Year’s and Other Winter Stories” was born from Pushkin’s “Blizzard,” notes Tatyana. “This is such a poignant story that only a Russian person can feel.” In general, Pushkin’s “Blizzard” left a huge mark on our literature. Sollogub wrote his “Blizzard” precisely with an allusion to Pushkin; Leo Tolstoy was haunted by this story, and he also wrote his “Blizzard.” The collection began with these three “Blizzards”, because this is an interesting topic in the history of literature... But only the story of Vladimir Sollogub remained in the final composition. The long Russian winter with Epiphany frosts, blizzards and blizzards, and the holidays - New Year, Christmas, Christmastide, which fall at this time, inspired writers. And we really wanted to show this feature of Russian literature.”

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Compiled by Tatyana Strygina

Christmas stories by Russian writers

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Series "Christmas Gift"

Approved for distribution by the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church IS 13-315-2235

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)

Boy at Christ's Christmas tree

Boy with a pen

Children are strange people, they dream and imagine. Before the Christmas tree and right before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some old clothes, which means that someone had equipped him when they sent him. He walked “with a pen”; This is a technical term and means to beg for alms. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something they have learned by heart; but this one did not howl and spoke somehow innocently and unusually and looked trustingly into my eyes - therefore, he was just starting a profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister who was unemployed and ill; maybe it’s true, but only I found out later that there are a lot of these boys: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, numb hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent workers are drinking, the same ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work no earlier than on Wednesday evening.” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, and their hungry babies are squealing right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected pennies, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, sometimes they pour a scythe into his mouth and laugh when, with his breathing stopped, he falls almost unconscious on the floor,

...and I put bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...

When he grows up, he is quickly sold off to a factory somewhere, but everything he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the careless workers, and they again drink away. But even before the factory, these children become complete criminals. They wander around the city and know places in different basements where they can crawl into and where they can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even among eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their careless people to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such people convey things about them that are incredible to hear, and yet they are all facts.

Boy at Christ's Christmas tree

But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one “story” myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself probably know what I wrote, but I keep imagining that this happened somewhere and sometime, this is exactly what happened just before Christmas, in some huge city and in a terrible freezing.

I imagine there was a boy in the basement, but he was still very small, about six years old or even younger. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was shaking. His breath flew out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on a chest, out of boredom, deliberately let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it fly out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunk, where his sick mother lay on a thin bedding like a pancake and on some kind of bundle under her head instead of a pillow. How did she end up here? She must have arrived with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The owner of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants scattered, it was a holiday, and the only one left, the robe, had been lying dead drunk for the whole day, without even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman, who had once lived somewhere as a nanny, but was now dying alone, was moaning from rheumatism, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he was already afraid to come close to her corner. He got something to drink somewhere in the hallway, but couldn’t find a crust anywhere, and for the tenth time he already went to wake up his mother. He finally felt terrified in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but the fire had not been lit. Feeling his mother’s face, he was amazed that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, rummaging for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, he walked out of the basement. He would have gone even earlier, but he was still afraid of the big dog upstairs, on the stairs, which had been howling all day at the neighbors’ doors. But the dog was no longer there, and he suddenly went outside.

Lord, what a city! He had never seen anything like this before. Where he came from, it was so dark at night, there was only one lantern on the entire street. Low wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, as soon as it gets dark, there is no one, everyone shuts up in their homes, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But there it was so warm and they gave him something to eat, but here - Lord, if only he could eat! and what knocking and thunder there is, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam rises from the driven horses, from their hot breathing muzzles; Through the loose snow, the horseshoes ring on the stones, and everyone is pushing so hard, and, Lord, I really want to eat, even just a piece of something, and my fingers suddenly feel so painful. A peace officer walked by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.

Here is the street again - oh, how wide! Here they will probably be crushed like that; how they all scream, run and drive, and the light, the light! and what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass there is a room, and in the room there is wood up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and on the tree there are so many lights, so many golden pieces of paper and apples, and all around there are dolls and little horses; and children are running around the room, dressed up, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here comes the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and even laughs, but his fingers and toes are already hurting, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and it hurts to move. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he began to cry and ran on, and now again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are all kinds of pies - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen come in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and entered. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady quickly came up and put a penny in his hand, and she opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! and the penny immediately rolled out and rang down the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went as quickly as possible, but he didn’t know where. He wants to cry again, but he’s too afraid, and he runs and runs and blows on his hands. And melancholy takes over him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrible, and suddenly, Lord! So what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass there are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very lifelike! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a large violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk - only now You can't hear it because of the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that such existed! and he wants to cry, but the dolls are so funny. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the robe from behind: a big, angry boy stood nearby and suddenly hit him on the head, tore off his cap, and kicked him from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran into he doesn’t know where, into a gateway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down behind some firewood: “They won’t find anyone here, and it’s dark.”

He sat down and huddled, but he couldn’t catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on a stove; Now he shuddered all over: oh, but he was about to fall asleep! How nice it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go look at the dolls again,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like life!..” and suddenly he heard his mother singing a song above him. “Mom, I’m sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!”

“Let’s go to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.

He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; He doesn’t see who called him, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he extended his hand and... And suddenly, - oh, what a light! Oh, what a tree! And it’s not a Christmas tree, he’s never seen such trees before! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and there are dolls all around - but no, these are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother is looking and laughing at him joyfully.

- Mother! Mother! Oh, how nice it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. -Who are you, boys? Who are you girls? - he asks, laughing and loving them.

“This is Christ’s Christmas tree,” they answer him. “Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own tree there...” And he found out that these boys and girls were all just like him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown onto the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated in the chukhonkas, from the orphanage while being fed, others died at the withered breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, others suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are all here now, they are all now like angels, they are all with Christ, and He Himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out His hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers... And the mothers of these children are all standing right there, on the sidelines, and crying; everyone recognizes their boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe away their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here...

And downstairs the next morning, the janitors found the small corpse of a boy who had run and frozen to collect firewood; They also found his mother... She died before him; both met with the Lord God in heaven.

And why did I compose such a story, which does not fit into an ordinary reasonable diary, especially a writer’s? and also promised stories mainly about real events! But that’s the point, it seems and seems to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about the Christmas tree at Christ’s - I don’t know how to tell you , could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent things.

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904)

The tall, evergreen tree of fate is hung with the blessings of life... From bottom to top hang careers, happy occasions, suitable games, winnings, buttered cookies, clicks on the nose, and so on. Adult children crowd around the Christmas tree. Fate gives them gifts...

- Children, which of you wants a rich merchant's wife? - she asks, taking a red-cheeked merchant's wife from a branch, strewn from head to toe with pearls and diamonds... - Two houses on Plyushchikha, three iron shops, one porter shop and two hundred thousand in money! Who wants?

- To me! To me! - Hundreds of hands reach out for the merchant’s wife. - I want a merchant's wife!

- Don’t crowd, children, and don’t worry... Everyone will be satisfied... Let the young doctor take the merchant’s wife. A person who devotes himself to science and enrolls himself as a benefactor of humanity cannot do without a pair of horses, good furniture, etc. Take it, dear doctor! You're welcome... Well, now the next surprise! Place on the Chukhlomo-Poshekhonskaya railway! Ten thousand salary, the same amount of bonuses, work three hours a month, an apartment of thirteen rooms and so on... Who wants it? Are you Kolya? Take it, honey! Next... Place of housekeeper for the lonely Baron Schmaus! Oh, don't tear like that, mesdames! Have patience!.. Next! A young, pretty girl, the daughter of poor but noble parents! Not a penny's dowry, but she has an honest, feeling, poetic nature! Who wants? (Pause.) Nobody?

- I would take it, but there’s nothing to feed me! – the poet’s voice is heard from the corner.

- So no one wants it?

“Perhaps, let me take it... So be it...,” says the small, arthritic old man serving in the spiritual consistory. - Perhaps...

– Zorina’s handkerchief! Who wants?

- Ah!.. For me! Me!.. Ah! My leg was crushed! To me!

- Next surprise! A luxurious library containing all the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, Goethe, all Russian and foreign authors, a lot of ancient volumes and so on... Who wants it?

- I'm with! - says the second-hand bookseller Svinopasov. - Please, sir!

Svinopasov takes the library, selects for himself “Oracle”, “Dream Book”, “Writer Book”, “Handbook for Bachelors”... and throws the rest on the floor...

- Next! Portrait of Okrejc!

Loud laughter is heard...

“Give me…” says the owner of the museum, Winkler. - It will come in handy...

The boots go to the artist... in the end the tree is torn down and the audience disperses... Only one employee of humor magazines remains near the tree...

- What do I need? - he asks fate. - Everyone received a gift, but at least I wanted something. This is disgusting of you!

- Everything was taken apart, nothing was left... However, there was only one cookie with butter left... Do you want it?

– No need... I’m already tired of these cookies with butter... The cash registers of some Moscow editorial offices are full of this stuff. Isn't there something more significant?

- Take these frames...

- I already have them...

- Here’s the bridle, the reins... Here’s the red cross, if you want... Toothache... Hedgehog gloves... A month in prison for defamation...

- I already have all this...

- Tin soldier, if you want... Map of the North...

The comedian waves his hand and goes home with the hope of next year’s Christmas tree...

1884

Yule story

There are times when winter, as if angry at human weakness, calls upon the harsh autumn to its aid and works together with it. Snow and rain swirl in the hopeless, foggy air. The wind, damp, cold, piercing, knocks on the windows and roofs with furious anger. He howls in the pipes and cries in the ventilation. There is a melancholy hanging in the soot-dark air... Nature is troubled... Damp, cold and eerie...

This was exactly the weather on the night before Christmas in one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, when I was not yet in the prison companies, but served as an appraiser in the loan office of retired staff captain Tupaev.

It was twelve o'clock. The storeroom, in which, by the will of the owner, I had my night residence and pretended to be a guard dog, was dimly illuminated by a blue lamp light. It was a large square room, littered with bundles, chests, whatnots... on the gray wooden walls, from the cracks of which disheveled tow peeked out, hung rabbit fur coats, undershirts, guns, paintings, sconces, a guitar... I, obliged to guard this stuff at night, lay on a large red chest behind a display case with precious things and looked thoughtfully at the lamp light...

For some reason I felt afraid. The things stored in the storerooms of the loan offices are scary... at night, in the dim light of the lamp, they seem alive... Now, when the rain was grumbling outside the window, and the wind was howling pitifully in the stove and above the ceiling, it seemed to me that they were making howling sounds. All of them, before getting here, had to pass through the hands of an appraiser, that is, through mine, and therefore I knew everything about each of them... I knew, for example, that the money received for this guitar was used to buy powders for consumptive cough... I knew that a drunkard shot himself with this revolver; my wife hid the revolver from the police, pawned it with us and bought a coffin.

The bracelet looking at me from the window was pawned by the man who stole it... Two lace shirts, marked 178 No., were pawned by a girl who needed a ruble to enter the Salon, where she was going to earn money... In short, on each item I read hopeless grief, illness, crime, corrupt debauchery...

On the night before Christmas, these things were somehow especially eloquent.

“Let us go home!” they cried, it seemed to me, along with the wind. - Let me go!

But not only things aroused a feeling of fear in me. When I stuck my head out from behind the display case and cast a timid glance at the dark, sweaty window, it seemed to me that human faces were looking into the storeroom from the street.

“What nonsense! - I invigorated myself. “What stupid tenderness!”

The fact is that a person endowed by nature with the nerves of an appraiser was tormented by his conscience on the night before Christmas - an incredible and even fantastic event. Conscience in loan offices is only under the mortgage. Here it is understood as an object of sale and purchase, but no other functions are recognized for it... It’s amazing where I could have gotten it from? I tossed from side to side on my hard chest and, squinting my eyes from the flickering lamp, tried with all my might to drown out a new, uninvited feeling within myself. But my efforts remained in vain...

Of course, physical and moral fatigue after hard, whole-day work was partly to blame. On Christmas Eve, the poor flocked to the loan office in droves. On a big holiday, and even in bad weather, poverty is not a vice, but a terrible misfortune! at this time, a drowning poor man looks for a straw in the loan office and receives a stone instead... for the entire Christmas Eve, so many people visited us that, for lack of space in the storeroom, we were forced to take three quarters of the mortgages into the barn. From early morning to late evening, without stopping for a minute, I bargained with ragamuffins, squeezed pennies and pennies out of them, saw tears, listened to vain pleas... by the end of the day I could barely stand on my feet: my soul and body were exhausted. It’s no wonder that I was now awake, tossing and turning from side to side and feeling terrible...

Someone carefully knocked on my door... Following the knock, I heard the owner’s voice:

– Are you sleeping, Pyotr Demyanich?

- Not yet, so what?

“You know, I’m wondering if we should open the door early tomorrow morning?” The holiday is big, and the weather is furious. The poor will swarm in like flies to honey. So you don’t go to mass tomorrow, but sit at the ticket office... Good night!

“That’s why I’m so scared,” I decided after the owner left, “because the lamp is flickering... I need to put it out...”

I got out of bed and went to the corner where the lamp hung. The blue light, faintly flashing and flickering, apparently struggled with death. Each flicker illuminated for a moment the image, the walls, the knots, the dark window... and in the window two pale faces, leaning against the glass, looked into the pantry.

“There’s no one there...” I reasoned. “That’s what I imagine.”

And when I, having put out the lamp, was groping my way to my bed, a small incident occurred that had a significant impact on my further mood... Suddenly, unexpectedly, a loud, furiously screeching crash was heard above my head, which lasted no longer than a second. Something cracked and, as if feeling terrible pain, it squealed loudly.

Then the fifth burst on the guitar, but I, gripped by panic, covered my ears and, like a madman, stumbling over chests and bundles, ran to the bed... I buried my head under the pillow and, barely breathing, freezing with fear, began to listen.

- Let us go! - the wind howled along with things. - Let go for the sake of the holiday! After all, you yourself are a poor man, you understand! I myself experienced hunger and cold! Let go!

Yes, I myself was a poor man and knew what hunger and cold meant. Poverty pushed me into this damned place as an appraiser; poverty made me despise grief and tears for the sake of a piece of bread. If it were not for poverty, would I have had the courage to value in pennies what is worth health, warmth, and holiday joys? Why does the wind blame me, why does my conscience torment me?

But no matter how my heart beat, no matter how fear and remorse tormented me, fatigue took its toll. I fell asleep. The dream was sensitive... I heard the owner knocking on my door again, how they struck for matins... I heard the wind howling and the rain pounding on the roof. My eyes were closed, but I saw things, a shop window, a dark window, an image. Things crowded around me and, blinking, asked me to let them go home. On the guitar, the strings burst with a squeal, one after another, bursting endlessly... beggars, old women, prostitutes looked out the window, waiting for me to unlock the loan and return their things to them.

In my sleep I heard something scratching like a mouse. The scraping was long and monotonous. I tossed and shrank because the cold and dampness blew heavily on me. As I pulled the blanket over myself, I heard rustling and human whispers.

“What a bad dream! – I thought. - How creepy! I wish I could wake up."

Something glass fell and broke. A light flashed behind the display window, and the light began to play on the ceiling.

- Don't knock! – a whisper was heard. - You'll wake up that Herod... Take off your boots!

Someone came up to the window, looked at me and touched the padlock. He was a bearded old man with a pale, worn-out face, wearing a torn soldier's coat and braces. A tall, thin guy with terribly long arms, wearing an untucked shirt and a short, torn jacket, approached him. They both whispered something and fidgeted around the display case.

“They’re robbing!” – flashed through my head.

Although I was sleeping, I remembered that there was always a revolver under my pillow. I quietly groped for it and squeezed it in my hand. The glass in the window tinkled.

- Hush, you'll wake me up. Then you will have to stab him.

Then I dreamed that I screamed in a deep, wild voice and, frightened by my voice, jumped up. The old man and the young guy, with their arms outstretched, attacked me, but when they saw the revolver, they backed away. I remember that a minute later they stood in front of me, pale and, blinking their eyes tearfully, begging me to let them go. The wind was breaking through the broken window and playing with the flame of the candle that the thieves had lit.

- Your honor! – someone spoke under the window in a crying voice. - You are our benefactors! Merciful people!

I looked at the window and saw an old woman’s face, pale, emaciated, soaked in the rain.

- Don't touch them! Let go! – she cried, looking at me with pleading eyes. - Poverty!

- Poverty! – the old man confirmed.

- Poverty! - the wind sang.

My heart sank with pain, and I pinched myself to wake up... But instead of waking up, I stood at the display window, took things out of it and frantically shoved them into the pockets of the old man and the guy.

- Take it quickly! – I gasped. - Tomorrow is a holiday, and you are beggars! Take it!

Having filled my beggar's pockets, I tied the rest of the jewelry into a knot and threw it to the old woman. I handed the old woman a fur coat, a bundle with a black pair, lace shirts and, by the way, a guitar through the window. There are such strange dreams! Then, I remember, the door rattled. As if they had grown out of the ground, the owner, the policeman, and the policemen appeared before me. The owner is standing next to me, but I don’t seem to see and continue to knit knots.

- What are you doing, scoundrel?

“Tomorrow is a holiday,” I answer. - They need to eat.

Then the curtain falls, rises again, and I see new scenery. I am no longer in the pantry, but somewhere else. A policeman walks around me, sets me a mug of water at night and mutters: “Look! Look! What are you planning for the holiday!” When I woke up, it was already light. The rain no longer beat on the window, the wind did not howl. The festive sun played merrily on the wall. The first person to congratulate me on the holiday was the senior policeman.

A month later I was tried. For what? I assured the judges that it was a dream, that it was unfair to judge a person for a nightmare. Judge for yourself: could I, out of the blue, give away other people’s things to thieves and scoundrels? And where has this been seen, to give away things without receiving a ransom? But the court accepted the dream as reality and convicted me. In prison companies, as you can see. Can't you, Your Honor, put in a good word for me somewhere? By God, it's not my fault.

IN In recent years, Christmas and Yuletide stories have become widespread. Not only are collections of Christmas stories written before 1917 published, but their creative tradition has begun to be revived. More recently, in the New Year's Eve issue of the magazine "Afisha" (2006), 12 Christmastide stories by modern Russian writers were published.

However, the very history of the emergence and development of the genre form of the Christmas story is no less fascinating than his masterpieces. An article by Elena Vladimirovna DUSHECHKINA, Doctor of Philology, Professor at St. Petersburg State University, is dedicated to her.

From a Yuletide story it is absolutely required that it be timed to coincide with the events of the Yuletide evening - from Christmas to Epiphany, that it be somewhat fantastic, that it have some kind of moral, at least like a refutation of a harmful prejudice, and finally - that it certainly ends cheerfully... Yuletide a story, being within all its frameworks, can still change and present an interesting variety, reflecting its time and customs.

N.S. Leskov

The history of the Christmas story can be traced in Russian literature over three centuries - from the 18th century to the present day, but its final formation and flourishing was observed in the last quarter of the 19th century - during the period of active growth and democratization of the periodical press and the formation of the so-called “small” press.

It is the periodical press, due to its timing to a specific date, that becomes the main supplier of calendar “literary products”, including Christmas stories.

Of particular interest are those texts in which there is a connection with oral folk Yuletide stories, because they clearly demonstrate the methods of assimilation by literature of the oral tradition and the “literariness” of folklore stories that are meaningfully related to the semantics of folk Christmastide and the Christian holiday of Christmas.

But the significant difference between a literary Yuletide story and a folklore one lies in the nature of the image and the interpretation of the climactic Yuletide episode.

The focus on the truth of the incident and the reality of the characters is an indispensable feature of such stories. Supernatural collisions are not typical of Russian literary Yuletide stories. A plot like Gogol’s “The Night Before Christmas” is quite rare. Meanwhile, the supernatural is the main theme of such stories. However, what may seem supernatural and fantastic to the heroes most often receives a very real explanation.

The conflict is not based on a person’s collision with the otherworldly evil world, but on the shift in consciousness that occurs in a person who, due to certain circumstances, doubts his lack of faith in the otherworld.

In humorous Christmas stories, so characteristic of “thin” magazines of the second half of the 19th century, the motive of a meeting with evil spirits is often developed, the image of which appears in a person’s mind under the influence of alcohol (cf. the expression “getting drunk as hell”). In such stories, fantastic elements are used unrestrainedly and, one might even say, uncontrollably, since their realistic motivation justifies any phantasmagoria.

But here it should be taken into account that literature is enriched by a genre, the nature and existence of which gives it a deliberately anomalous character.

Being a phenomenon of calendar literature, the Yuletide story is tightly connected with its holidays, their cultural everyday life and ideological issues, which prevents changes in it, its development, as required by the literary norms of modern times.

An author who wants or, more often, has received an order from the editor to write a Christmas story for the holiday, has a certain “warehouse” of characters and a given set of plot devices, which he uses more or less masterfully, depending on his combinatorial abilities.

The literary genre of the Christmas story lives according to the laws of folklore and ritual “aesthetics of identity”, focusing on the canon and cliche - a stable complex of stylistic, plot and thematic elements, the transition of which from text to text not only does not cause irritation to the reader, but, on the contrary, gives him pleasure.

It must be admitted that most literary Christmas stories do not have high artistic merit. In developing the plot, they use long-established techniques; their problems are limited to a narrow range of life problems, which, as a rule, boil down to clarifying the role of chance in a person’s life. Their language, although it often pretends to reproduce living conversational speech, is often wretched and monotonous. However, the study of such stories is necessary.

Firstly, they directly and visibly, due to the nakedness of the techniques, demonstrate the ways in which literature assimilates folklore subjects. Already being literature, but at the same time continuing to perform the function of folklore, which consists in influencing the reader with the entire atmosphere of its artistic world, built on mythological ideas, such stories occupy an intermediate position between oral and written tradition.

Secondly, such stories and thousands of others like them constitute the literary body called mass fiction. They served as the main and constant “reading material” for the Russian ordinary reader, who was brought up on them and formed his artistic taste. By ignoring such literary products, it is impossible to understand the psychology of perception and the artistic needs of a literate, but still uneducated Russian reader. We know “great” literature quite well - the works of major writers, classics of the 19th century - but our knowledge about it will remain incomplete until we can imagine the background against which great literature existed and on the basis of which it often grew .

And finally, thirdly, Christmas stories are examples of almost completely unstudied calendar literature - a special kind of texts, the consumption of which is timed to a certain calendar time, when only their, so to speak, therapeutic effect on the reader is possible.

For qualified readers, the clichéd and stereotypical nature of the Yuletide story was a disadvantage, which was reflected in the criticism of Yuletide production, in declarations about the crisis of the genre and even its end. This attitude towards the Christmas story accompanies it almost throughout its literary history, testifying to the specificity of the genre, whose right to literary existence was proven only by the creative efforts of major Russian writers of the 19th century.

Those writers who could give an original and unexpected interpretation of the “supernatural” event, “evil spirits,” “Christmas miracle” and other components fundamental to Yuletide literature were able to go beyond the usual cycle of Yuletide plots. These are Leskov’s “Yuletide” masterpieces - “Selected Grain”, “Little Mistake”, “The Darner” - about the specifics of the “Russian miracle”.

Such are Chekhov’s stories - “Vanka”, “On the Way”, “Woman’s Kingdom” - about a possible, but never-fulfilled meeting at Christmas.

Their achievements in the genre of Christmas stories were supported and developed by Kuprin, Bunin, Andreev, Remizov, Sologub and many other writers who turned to him in order to once again, but from their own point of view, in the manner characteristic of each of them, remind the general reader about the holidays , highlighting the meaning of human existence.

And yet, the mass Christmas production of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, supplied to the reader at Christmas by periodicals, turns out to be limited by worn-out techniques - cliches and templates. Therefore, it is not surprising that already at the end of the 19th century, parodies began to appear both on the genre of the Christmas story and on its literary life - writers writing Christmas stories and readers reading them.

New breath for the Christmas story was unexpectedly given by the upheavals of the early 20th century - the Russo-Japanese War, the Troubles of 1905–1907, and later the First World War.

One of the consequences of the social upheavals of those years was an even more intense growth of the press than was the case in the 1870s and 1880s. This time he had not so much educational as political reasons: parties were being created that needed their publications. “Christmas episodes,” as well as “Easter” ones, play a significant role in them. The main ideas of the holiday - love for one's neighbor, compassion, mercy (depending on the political attitude of the authors and editors) - are combined with a variety of party slogans: either with calls for political freedom and the transformation of society, or with demands for the restoration of "order" and the pacification of "turmoil" "

The renewal and raising of the prestige of the Christmas story during this period was also facilitated by the processes taking place within literature itself. Modernism (in all its ramifications) was accompanied by a growing interest among the intelligentsia in Orthodoxy and in the spiritual sphere in general. Numerous articles devoted to various religions of the world and literary works based on a wide variety of religious and mythological traditions appear in magazines.

In this atmosphere of attraction to the spiritual, which gripped the intellectual and artistic elite of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Yuletide and Christmas stories turned out to be an extremely convenient genre for artistic treatment. Under the pen of modernists, the Christmas story is modified, sometimes moving significantly away from its traditional forms.

Sometimes, as, for example, in the story by V.Ya. Bryusov’s “The Child and the Madman”, it provides an opportunity to depict psychologically extreme situations. Here the search for the baby Jesus is carried out by “marginal” heroes - a child and a mentally ill person - who perceive the miracle of Bethlehem not as an abstract idea, but as an unconditional reality.

In other cases, Christmas works are based on medieval (often apocryphal) texts, which reproduce religious sentiments and feelings, which is especially characteristic of A.M. Remizova.

Sometimes, by recreating the historical setting, the Christmas story is given a special flavor, as, for example, in the story by S.A. Ausländer "Christmastide in Old Petersburg".

The First World War gave Yuletide literature a new and very characteristic turn.

Patriotic-minded writers at the beginning of the war transfer the action of traditional plots to the front, tying military-patriotic and Christmas themes into one knot.

The Yuletide tradition finds a unique application in the era of the events of 1917 and the Civil War. In newspapers and magazines that were not yet closed after October, many works sharply directed against the Bolsheviks appeared, which was reflected, for example, in the first issue of the magazine Satyricon for 1918.

Subsequently, in the territories occupied by the troops of the White movement, works using Christmas motifs in the fight against the Bolsheviks are found quite regularly.

In publications published in cities controlled by the Soviet regime, where at the end of 1918 attempts to at least to some extent preserve an independent press ceased, the Yuletide tradition almost died out, occasionally reminding itself of itself in the New Year's issues of humorous weekly magazines. At the same time, the texts published in them play on individual, most superficial motifs of Christmas literature, leaving aside the Christmas theme.

In the literature of Russian diaspora, the fate of Yuletide literature turned out to be different.

The Yuletide stories of the first wave of Russian emigration represent an attempt to pour into the “small” traditional form the experiences of Russian people who were tortured in a foreign-language environment and in difficult economic conditions of the 1920s–1930s.

preserve their cultural traditions. The situation in which these people found themselves contributed to the writers’ turn to the Yuletide genre. Emigrant writers may well not have invented sentimental stories, since they encountered them in their everyday lives. In addition, the very focus of the first wave of emigration on tradition (preservation of language, faith, ritual, literature) corresponded to the orientation of Christmas and Yuletide texts on an idealized past, on memories, on the cult of the hearth. In emigrant Christmas texts, this tradition was also supported by interest in ethnography, Russian life, and Russian history.

In Soviet Russia, a complete extinction of the tradition of the calendar story still did not occur, although, of course, there was not the number of Yuletide and Christmas works that arose at the turn of the century. This tradition was, to a certain extent, supported by New Year's works (prose and poetry), published in newspapers and thin magazines, especially for children (the newspaper "Pionerskaya Pravda", the magazines "Pioneer", "Counselor", "Murzilka" and others). Of course, in these materials the Christmas theme was absent or was presented in a very distorted form. At first glance it may seem strange, but it is precisely with the Christmas tradition that the “Christmas tree in Sokolniki”, so memorable for many generations of Soviet children, is connected, “spun off” from the essay by V.D. Bonch-Bruevich “Three attempts on V.I. Lenin", first published in 1930.

Here Lenin, who came to celebrate the Christmas tree at the village school in 1919, with his kindness and affection clearly resembles the traditional Father Frost, who always brought so much joy and fun to children.

One of the best Soviet idylls, A. Gaidar’s story “Chuk and Gek,” also seems to be connected with the tradition of the Christmas story. Written in the tragic era of the late thirties, it, with unexpected sentimentality and kindness, so characteristic of a traditional Christmas story, recalls the highest human values ​​- children, family happiness, the comfort of home, echoing Dickens' Christmas story "The Cricket on the Stove."

Yuletide motifs and, in particular, the motif of Yuletide mummering, inherited from folk Christmastide by Soviet mass culture, and primarily by children's educational institutions, merged more organically with the Soviet New Year holiday. It is this tradition that, for example, focuses on the films “Carnival Night” and “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath” by E.A. Ryazanov, a director, of course, endowed with sharp genre thinking and always perfectly aware of the viewer’s needs for festive experiences.

Another soil on which calendar literature grew was the Soviet calendar, which was regularly enriched with new Soviet holidays, starting from the anniversaries of the so-called revolutionary events and ending with those that especially proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s.

professional holidays. It is enough to turn to the periodicals of that time, to newspapers and thin magazines - “Ogonyok”, “Rabotnitsa” - to be convinced of how widespread texts related to the Soviet state calendar were.

Texts with the subtitles “Yuletide” and “Christmas” stories practically fell out of use during Soviet times. But they were not forgotten. These terms appeared in print from time to time: authors of various articles, memoirs and works of fiction often used them to characterize sentimental or far from reality events and texts.

This term is especially common in ironic headlines such as “Ecology is not a Christmas story”, “Not a Christmas story”, etc. The memory of the genre was also preserved by the intellectuals of the old generation, who were brought up on it, reading issues of Sincere Word in childhood, sorting through the files of Niva and other pre-revolutionary magazines.

How can this phenomenon be explained?

Let's note several factors. In all areas of modern life, there is a desire to restore the broken connection of times: to return to those customs and forms of life that were forcibly interrupted as a result of the October Revolution. Perhaps the key point in this process is the attempt to revive the sense of “calendar” in modern man. Humans have a natural need to live in the rhythm of time, within the framework of a conscious annual cycle. The fight against “religious prejudices” in the 20s and the new “industrial calendar” (five-day week), introduced in 1929 at the XVI Party Conference, abolished the Christmas holiday, which was quite consistent with the idea of ​​​​destroying the old world “to the ground” and building a new one. The consequence of this was the destruction of tradition - a naturally formed mechanism for transmitting the foundations of the way of life from generation to generation. Nowadays, much of what was lost is returning, including the old calendar rituals, and with it the “Yuletide” literature.

LITERATURE

Research Dushechkina E.V.

Research Russian Christmas story: the formation of the genre. - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University Publishing House, 1995.

Russian Christmas tree: History, mythology, literature. - St. Petersburg: Norint, 2002. Ram Henrik.

Pre-revolutionary holiday literature and Russian modernism / Authorized translation from English by E.R.

Squires // Poetics of Russian literature of the early twentieth century. - M., 1993.

Lyrics

Yuletide stories: Stories and poems by Russian writers [about Christmas and Yuletide]. Compilation and notes by S.F. Dmitrenko.

- M.: Russian book, 1992.

Petersburg Christmas story.

Compilation, introductory article, notes by E.V. Dushechkina. - L.: Petropol, 1991.