Santa Claus - Red, Blue, White Nose

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

They not only have different noses, but also their fur coats - Red's nose is red, Blue's is blue, and White's is white. But sometimes Frost White nose is also dressed in a black fur coat embroidered with silver …

The Frost Blue nose cools the lazy, they have a blue nose in the frost, and the Frost Red nose warms up the hardworking - in the frost such cheeks burn.

Well, and Frost White nose does not spare anyone … If someone meets him, he is unlikely to return home alive … So this is the fate … White nose freezes to death. Frost The white nose is rarely mentioned in folklore … It is very severe for children's fairy tales. Death-Marena is his companion, not his granddaughter-Snow Maiden …

But his other two brothers - Frost Blue Nose and Frost Red Nose - are frequent guests in folk tales and songs!

Here, for example, is the well-known Belarusian fairy tale "Two Frosts"

Walked across the field two Frosts, two siblings - Frost Blue nose and Frost Red nose.

Frosts walk, walk, praise each other. And the night is bright, bright. Roomy for Frosts in the wild.

And quietly, so quietly, as if there was no living soul left in the world. Frosts ran across from the field to the forest. They run, click, jump from tree to tree, scare the bunnies. We jumped from the forest into the village, and let's shoot at the roofs!

- Hey, - says Frost Blue Nose, - everyone hid, they are afraid to get out into the yard.

- Just let someone come out - let's give him fear, - Frost Red Nose answers.

It was getting light. Thick smoke poured out of the pipes. Wells creaked. The men came out of the huts. Some went to thresh, some are going to the forest for firewood.

- Wait a minute, brother, - said Frost Red Nose. - Let's run with you on the road in the field.

And they ran again into the field. They stand side by side, waiting for the travelers.

The sled creaked on the road. A bell rang somewhere under the arc.

A peasant is sitting in a sleigh, driving a horse. And behind the sleigh, a whacky wagon floats, the bell rings.

“Well, wait a minute,” says Frost Blue Nose. - You run for the man, and I for the pan.

And they ran to freeze the travelers.

Frost Blue nose ran for a long time until Pan caught up. Finally I caught up, climbed under the fur coat. The heat drives out from there. The pan shivered, the legs were chilly, the cold went through the body, the pan's nose turned blue. And Frost Blue Nose just chuckles. I almost froze Pan to death!

And Frost Red nose caught up with the villager and let's freeze him.

- Hey, the frost is not joking, - says the villager. He got off the sleigh, stomped with his feet, clapped his hands on the shoulders. He ran like this for half a mile, and he got hot. He sat down in his sleigh, rides - and there is not much grief.

- Well, wait a minute, brother: I'll get you through when you chop wood.

A man drove into the forest. And Frost Red nose overtook him, waiting in the forest. The peasant unharnessed the conic, took the ax, and when he began to chop it, he felt hot. I dropped the cover. And Moroz was delighted: he climbed into the casing and began to weave white crochet there.

Made the casing white as snow …

A man chopped wood, he goes to the sheepskin coat, and he froze all over.

- Hey, brother, are you here?

He took a whip and how he began to thresh - Frost Red nose jumped out a little alive and straight into the forest.

Frost Red Nose got angry at the villager, but he can't do anything with him …

* * *

Ded Moroz comes from the most hoary antiquity

Santa Claus is a mighty Russian pagan God, sung in legends and Slavic tales - the personification of Russian winter frosts, a blacksmith who freezes the rivers with ice, showered winter nature with sparkling snowy silver, giving the joy of winter festivities, and in difficult times protecting from enemies by unprecedented winter cold weather, from which iron begins to break. Frost helps lost travelers, showing the way.

Santa Claus was also identified with the first month of the year - the middle of winter. The first month of the year is cold and chilly - the king of frosts, the root of winter, its sovereign. It is strict, icy, icy, the time of snows. January is what we call it - cold.

Ded Moroz is also a hero of classical Russian literature - the play by A. N. Ostrovsky "The Snow Maiden", a poem by N. A. Nekrasov "Frost, Red Nose", poem by V. Ya. Bryusov "To the King of the North Pole".

Three Brothers Frost are three hypostases of Santa Claus. And the very image of Santa Claus is the winter hypostasis of the mighty and wise God Veles.

Santa Claus has many names and hypostases. At different times and in different places, he appeared in different ways. He is Frost, and Studenets, and Snowy Grandfather, and Grandfather Treskun, and Pozvist (Whistle), and Zimnik, and Karachun …

Grandfather Treskun is an old man with a long beard and a harsh disposition like Russian frosts. From November to March, the sovereign master on earth. They say even the Sun is afraid of him! He is married to the harsh Winter Marene.

Frost is a hero, a blacksmith who fetters the water with "iron frosts". Stern, walking the earth in the company of the Sun and Wind, and freezing to death the peasants who met on the way (in the Belarusian fairy tale "Frost, Sun and Wind"). Frost was sometimes identified with a violent winter wind.

Zimnik is an old man with white hair and a long gray beard, with an uncovered head, in warm white clothes and with an iron club in his hands. Where he passes - there wait for a cruel cold.

Pozvizd is the Slavic God of storms and bad weather. As soon as he shakes his head, a large hail falls to the ground. Instead of a cloak, the winds blow behind him, snow falls from the floor of his clothes. Pozvizd rushes rapidly across the heavens, accompanied by a retinue of storms and hurricanes.

Karachun - among the Slavic deities, stands out for its ferocity - an evil spirit that shortens life. Underground God who rules the frosts. The dark hypostasis of the winter Veles. The longest night of the year, the night of the Winter Solstice, is also called Karachun.

One way or another, from ancient times, Santa Claus was represented as a gray-haired old man with a long beard in a long thick fur coat, felt boots, a hat, mittens, and with a staff with which he freezes people.

Below is the traditional paraphernalia and symbolism of the image of Santa Claus.

The beard and hair are thick, gray, and silvery. The symbolic meaning is power, happiness, prosperity and wealth.

The shirt and trousers are white, linen, decorated with white geometric patterns - a symbol of purity.

Fur coat - long, embroidered with silver (eight-pointed stars, jibs, another traditional ornament), trimmed with swan down or white fur.

The hat is embroidered with silver and pearls. Trim with swan down or white fur. Hall with a triangular cut on the face - stylized horns. The shape of the cap is semi-oval.

Mittens - embroidered with silver - a symbol of purity and holiness of everything that he gives from his hands. Sometimes Santa Claus has three-fingered mittens (besides the big one, the index finger is also highlighted - that is, such as our military men wear to this day in winter). But he has such mittens not for the convenience of work, but to indicate belonging to the highest divine principle ("three-fingered" is a corresponding symbol since the Neolithic times).

Belt - white with an ornament - a symbol of the connection between ancestors and descendants.

Boots - embroidered with silver.

The staff is twisted, silvery-white. The staff is completed by a lunar (a stylized image of the month) or the head of a bull (a symbol of power, fertility and happiness). Both are signs that Santa Claus is the hypostasis of Veles.

The color of a fur coat, hats and mittens (sometimes felt boots) corresponds to a specific hypostasis of Santa Claus: red, blue or white. But the symbolism in any color, these clothes retain white. White and silver are symbols of the moon, holiness, north, water and purity.

The Snow Maiden or Snow Maiden, the heroine of many Russian fairy tales, the snow girl - the granddaughter of Santa Claus, who accompanies her Grandfather everywhere - is a symbol of frozen waters, the spirit of ice. This girl is always dressed only in white clothes. The headpiece is an eight-pointed crown, embroidered with silver and pearls. The peoples of Northern Europe call the Snow Maiden the Snow Queen …

To this day, Santa Claus walks in a long fur coat, felt boots and a staff. Move on foot or in a sleigh pulled by three white trotters. His constant companion is the granddaughter of the Snow Maiden. Santa Claus plays with the children the game "Freeze", and hides gifts under the tree on New Year's Eve.

On holidays, Santa Claus does not appear immediately, but in the middle of the celebration. According to popular beliefs, any guest is always welcome and should be an object of veneration as a representative of a foreign world. Santa Claus should be invited, which corresponds to the ancient ritual of inviting the spirits of ancestors. Santa Claus, in essence, is the ancestor-donor. Therefore, they call him not an old man or an old man, but a grandfather or grandfather.

But this has not been the case at all times. For centuries, the church has forbidden even the very name of Santa Claus to remember. But as Christianity weakened at the beginning of the 20th century, the situation changed. For the first time after centuries of persecution, Santa Claus appeared on Christmas Day in 1910. But that was not for long. Already in the mid-1920s, an anti-religious campaign began in the USSR. Through the efforts of activists, not only the tree, but also Santa Claus were included in the "religious relics".

And only in December 1935, on Stalin's instructions, a member of the Presidium of the USSR Central Executive Committee, Pavel Postyshev, published an article in the Pravda newspaper where he proposed organizing a New Year celebration for children with the participation of Santa Claus. Together with the rehabilitation of the Christmas tree, the denunciations of Santa Claus, who had been fully restored in rights, also ceased. The organizers of children's "Christmas trees" were given the opportunity to take initiative, the compilers of recommendations for the arrangement of "Christmas trees" wrote scripts, which, in the end, led to the development of a standard ritual of a public children's "Christmas tree": "Grandfather Frost … suddenly appears in the hall and just like that, like a hundred or two hundred years ago, and maybe a thousand years ago, together with the children, he dances around the Christmas tree, singing an old song in chorus, after which gifts begin to pour out of his bag for children."

Later in the USSR, this image was finally canonized: the ancient Slavic God Santa Claus has become today a symbol of the most beloved national holiday - the New Year, replacing the holiday of the Nativity of Christ, with which, with the support of the secular authorities, the church covered Kolyada for almost a whole millennium …

The attitude of the church to Santa Claus - as to a pagan God - has always been and still remains purely hostile. Until now, some Orthodox Christians blame Stalin for not destroying Father Frost. But today, realizing that Santa Claus is an integral part of the ineradicable Russian tradition, the church no longer hopes to simply ban him (like Babu Yaga or the Lord of the Sea), but now insists on the public "baptism" of Santa Claus …

* * *

Good fun "I don't care frost"

On the opposite sides of the area chosen for the game - a "clear field" - two "houses" (two "villages") or a "house" ("village") and a "forest" are designated, the players are located in the "forest". In the middle of the distance between the "forest" and the "village", the width of the "field" is limited by two poles. The distance between the poles is determined empirically, but, as a rule, it should not be less than 10 meters. Between the poles, the driver stands facing the players - Frost Red nose. He says: "I am Frost - Red nose. Which of you dares to set off on a path-path?"

The chorus players answer: "We are not afraid of threats, and we do not care about the cold!" (In a purely childish version of the game: "… and we are not afraid of frost").

After that, they run across the "field" to the "house", but it is imperative to run between the poles. Frost tries to "freeze" them - to touch them with a hand or a staff. Moreover, only the very end of the staff (namely the "snowflake") "acts", and not its entire length. The players can touch the rest of the staff (with the body, but not with their hands!), Push it away, take it aside, etc. But the variant with the staff can be used only if you have a certain experience, otherwise you can accidentally injure the players. The "frozen" ones stop and freeze in a caught pose at the place where Frost overtook them, and stay that way until the Frost "unfreezes" each of them with his staff after the end of the entire dash. After each dash, a new Frost is selected from the "unfrozen" according to some conditional criterion (for example, with the help of a countdown), and the previous one is included in the game on an equal basis with everyone, including those who were "frozen". The game ends when there is not a single participant left (except for the last Santa Claus) who has not been "frozen" at least once. The last Santa Claus is declared the winner. You can at the end of the game and compare which Frost "froze" more players.

The game proceeds in the same way as the previous one, but there are two Frosts in it - Frost Red Nose and Frost Blue Nose.

Standing between the landmarks, they say: "We are two young brothers, two daring Frosts. I am Frost Red nose. I am Frost Blue nose. Which of you will decide to set off on a path-path?"

The difference from the previous version is that those who were "frozen" by Frost Blue nose drop out of the game and do not participate in further races.

The variant with two Frosts is more suitable when there are initially more than 10-15 people playing.

Those who play between the landmarks need to run twice - from the "house" to the "forest" and back. At the same time, having reached the forest, the player takes there some cherished gift or "treasure" (gingerbread, candy, coin, etc.), with which he returns to the "home". If Frost freezes it on the way back, then the "treasure" returns to the "forest". At the end of the game, the winner is determined - which of the players has collected the most "treasures". In this version, Santa Claus may not change, but be a permanent presenter. The remaining "treasures" Santa Claus distributes to the participants and guests at his own discretion.