What is the symbol of the new year. Symbols of the New Year from different countries. From antiquity to the present day

About the symbol of the year
Symbols are like Ariadne’s threads, which allow a person not to get lost in the labyrinth of his own life. They exist in many manifestations of the reality around us, but each of them is interpreted differently, since each person has his own key to defining a particular symbol!

Zodiac calendar
Throughout the existence of mankind, the starry sky has attracted people with its mysterious beauty and mysterious unknown. Ancient people were completely confident that everything that happened on Earth was sent from heaven. Since in those distant times there were no clocks and calendars, our ancestors navigated in space by studying the correct “reading” of the starry sky.

New Year is perhaps the most family-friendly of all existing holidays. It is filled with magic and anticipation of something new. It is celebrated all over the world. And, despite the fact that in most countries the culmination of the holiday occurs at different times, the traditions and symbols are very often similar. Below is a list of the ten most famous New Year symbols.

Not a single New Year has ever passed without the smell of tangerines, and without them themselves. The delicate smell of these citrus fruits combined with the fresh aroma of pine needles is perhaps the main association of the New Year.

It’s just as difficult to imagine New Year’s Eve without champagne and the clink of glasses as without tangerines. And most importantly, the presence of sparkling wine is often just a symbol rather than a reason to drink.

This evergreen modesty, a must for decorating every home, is turned into a resplendent beauty with the shimmer of bright garlands, around which round dances often circle.

Father Frost and Snow Maiden, the main characters of everyone's favorite holiday. With their arrival, gifts and the start of entertainment are expected. Both adults and children await their arrival; they bring joy, smiles and fun. Children very often write letters with requests to Grandfather Frost in Veliky Ustyug and receive gifts from him.

Sparkling garlands are always beautiful, but the soul always wants something big! And as soon as the last sparkler burns out with the 12th chime, everyone goes out into the street together, where hundreds of the brightest fireworks explode.

Address by the President of the Russian Federation

Before the Kremlin chimes strike 12 times, we all watch the address of the head of our state with bated breath and a feeling of patriotism. Having listened to the results of the outgoing year, we accept your best wishes with joy and hope. At this moment, I want to believe that the best is ahead of us.

Of course, according to tradition, you need to write your wish on a piece of paper, burn it, and drink the ashes along with a glass of champagne. But many simply limit themselves to solemn silence and internal dialogue.

We all love to congratulate each other on the New Year and give gifts. And everyone knows that the most sincere wish always happens only in the presence of a person. Therefore, visiting, hugging dear friends, what could be better.

New Year's gifts

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The main symbol of the New Year is the Christmas tree. Why a Christmas tree and not some other tree? This is how the legend tells about it.

Near the cave where little Jesus was born, an olive tree, a palm tree and a spruce tree grew. An olive tree and a palm tree gave fruit to the baby, and the spruce tree stood bashfully on the sidelines, afraid to ruin the holiday. Really, what could she give? Thorny needles, sticky resin, hard buds? The tree began to cry with resin... And then stars fell from the sky onto the distressed tree.

And a miracle happened. The spruce, as beautiful as a fairy tale, approached the baby, and he, amazed by its splendor, smiled joyfully. The spruce rejoiced, but did not become proud, and the Angel rewarded the good tree for its modesty, making it from now on a sign of the bright holiday of Christmas.

This is how a green sparkling beauty appeared for the holiday, symbolizing the inextricable connection between earth and heaven, that is, people with God. But this is a beautiful legend.

In ancient times, people deified nature and believed in the existence of spirits who lived in the forests on coniferous trees. It was believed that they were the ones who caused severe frosts, sent blizzards and confused hunters.

In order to protect themselves and their property from the tricks of forest creatures, people tried in every possible way to appease them: they decorated spruce trees with various fruits and treats. The evergreen tree has long symbolized life itself.

Spruce is considered a symbol of eternity. Nature can freeze and bloom, but spruce, like life, is eternal. It remains green at any time of the year and represents immortality, eternal youth, courage, fidelity, longevity and dignity. Even its cones were a symbol of the fire of life and restoration of health.

It so happened that we borrowed the custom of putting up a Christmas tree for the New Year from Western Europe.

The New Year tree came to Russia from Germany at the beginning XIX century thanks to the Germans who lived in St. Petersburg.

The Germans were the first to show Russian nobles that the Christmas tree should be hung upside down (or upside down) from the ceiling. History is silent about when the symbol of the New Year was decided to be lowered from the ceiling to the ground.

The magnificent decoration of the forest beauty also has its own history. Her earliest outfit consisted of candles and delicacies - apples, nuts, sweets, gingerbread. This means that it was also a treat for children. The Christmas tree has become a familiar attribute of the Christmas holiday. The trees were decorated with crafts made of colored paper, fruits, refined sugar and tinsel.

There is also a legend about New Year's tinsel. A long time ago there lived a kind woman who had many children, they were poor, and she had to work a lot. The evening before Christmas, the woman decorated the Christmas tree, but she had very few decorations. At night, spiders crawled onto the branches of the tree and wove a web. Seeing this and feeling sorry for the poor mother, Jesus Christ blessed the tree, and the web turned into silver tinsel...

In Russia there was a tradition of tearing off gifts, which was called “plucking the Christmas tree” (or they said: “destroying the Christmas tree”). There were also rich eccentrics who hung the top branches with expensive earrings, rings and other expensive jewelry.

Glass Christmas tree decorations were invented in Germany in the 19th century. According to legend, one poor glass blower once did not have money for edible Christmas tree decorations, and in order to somehow console his children, he made them out of glass. The replacement turned out to be so successful that it soon became fashionable, and then a tradition. Russian glass wizards supplemented traditional balls, cones and mushrooms with funny figures of fairy tale heroes - this is how the “Russian Christmas tree” differed from its European sisters.

At the end of the 20s of the 20th century, the Christmas tree in Russia was banned along with the celebration of Christmas and even the New Year. But in 1936 she returned as a symbol of the New Year holidays and I hope she will not leave us again.

In 2010, it was 108 years since the well-known song “A Christmas Tree was Born in the Forest” was written.

This song has become a real New Year's anthem in our country. Many consider it a folk song, although in fact it has both an author and a composer.

The author of the favorite New Year's song of many generations is Raisa Adamovna Kudasheva. For a long time, Raisa Adamovna did not even suspect that “Christmas Tree” had become a song. One day, quite by accident, when she was traveling on a train, she heard two grandmothers praisingtheir granddaughters. One of them asked her granddaughter to sing. How amazed Raisa Adamovna was when the girl sang “Herringbone”! Kudasheva herself was not even familiar with the person who wrote the music for her poems.

The poem was set to music by an amateur composerLeonid Karlovich Bekman .

Leonid Karlovich Bekman with his wife and daughters.

Wherever the tradition of planting a coniferous tree was born, it is hardly bad. Spruce or fir, Christmas or New Year - this is the most wonderful and indispensable attribute of the holiday, its mood and soul!

But I urge everyone not to install natural spruce and pine trees in their homes.

The cut down beauties will delight you for several days and will be thrown out into the street like unnecessary things or garbage.

Do you know how many years spruce needs to grow before it can be put to good use? 100-120 years.

You can exchange them for artificial Christmas trees that will delight you for many years.

Conclusion:

Spruce is considered a symbol of eternity. At any time of the year it remains green, bringing with it immortality, eternal youth, fidelity, and longevity. For a long time, people believed that spirits lived in the branches of evergreen trees. Not only the good ones, but also the evil ones, who need to be given gifts to appease them. Having decorated the Christmas tree with fruits and treats, people were sure that no evil spirits or evil spirits would enter the house and harm them. This ritual came to us from distant centuries.

Now the evil forces have long been forgotten, and the main purpose of a decorated Christmas tree is to bring joy to children and adults.

Therefore, in Russia, spruce is considered a symbol of the New Year.

Research work 1 "A" classTatiana's Kulbenok

Hand. Karchebnaya Tatyana Gennadievna

On Russian soil, the custom of decorating a Christmas tree among the people did not take root, it seems, until the revolution - this is explained not so much by the fact that the tree as a symbol of the New Year was originally part of the noble culture, but by another circumstance: spruce in folk Slavic culture is inextricably linked with the world of the dead (let us remember and With modern funeral wreaths), and “reassigning” a symbol is much more difficult than approving a new one.

From the article by A.L. Barkova. From here:
As we found out, the mythological core of the New Year's ritual is
reproduction of the act of creation of the world, with the only difference that at the beginning
Since the beginning of time, the world was created by the gods, and from year to year man has to do this. Of all the many elements of the creation myth, let us focus on the central one (in the figurative and literal sense) - on the image of the World Axis.

The World Axis is the most important element of the mythological picture of the world: it, supporting the firmament, embodies the forces of Order, Good, and Life. Most often she appears in the form of the World Tree, which connects earth, heaven and the underworld. It’s not hard to guess that we’ll be talking about the New Year tree. The custom of decorating a Christmas tree for the New Year came to Russia from Europe under Peter I; it is of German origin. However, the veneration of spruce as a sacred tree was originally not Germanic, but Celtic. In the Gaul culture, the spruce was the embodiment of the Tree of Life (that is, the World Tree) thanks to its evergreen branches.

So, today's Santa Claus.

His name contains two important characteristics - he is old and associated with the element of cold. Before us is one of the hypostases of the ruler of the Lower World, the world of death. But what is the world of death for an archaically thinking person? This is not the hell depicted in Christian literature, nor the infernal nightmare propagated by American cinema. The world of death is the abode of departed relatives with whom the archaic
the person was in regular and regulated contacts: he
“fed” the ancestors, bringing them pancakes, scrambled eggs and other funeral food,
they magically ensured his well-being, harvest,
abundant offspring of livestock, etc. Described many times in mythological texts, such a world of death appears as a semblance of the world living or a world of abundance. His ruler has power over countless riches (which he can release into the world of the living), power over time, power over wisdom. In the image of Father Frost, these features have been preserved quite well: he brings gifts, he is the embodied time of the new year. As for the connection with wisdom, it can be indirectly traced in the interaction of Santa Claus with children: read a poem and Santa will give him a toy. Regarding Santa Claus, we note one more detail: children understand that his image under the tree is not himself; therefore, the figure under The tree, necessary for the arrival of a foreign ruler in the house, is nothing more than an analogue of a pagan idol.

Along with Santa Claus, a boy appears on the “Christmas trees”, dressed exactly like him. This boy - New Year - according to the plot of the holiday, is the young double of Santa Claus. Their pairing makes one recall the symbolism of the Roman god Janus (in whose honor, by the way, the first month of the year is named), the lord of every beginning and end - Janus seemed to have two faces, with one of his faces being young and the other old.

So, Santa Claus is coming to us . But what does he drive?

In recent years (under the influence of Western culture) he has replaced the Russian troika with a string of deer. Why did the deer so easily enter our culture as Santa Claus's mount? This is not at all explained by the fashion for foreign things, but by the re-actualization of a mythological archetype: the deer is a conductor between worlds, especially associated with the path from the Lower World to the Middle World and vice versa (for example, let us point out the golden deer in the Indian Ramayana).

Gifts, like Santa Claus himself, come from another world. Children know for sure that there are enough gifts in Santa Claus's bag for everyone (here they are - innumerable riches). Where did the custom of giving gifts to each other for the New Year come from? Here we have an element of productive magic: gifts on a festive night magically provide an abundance of life's blessings that we hope to find in the new year.

Everything is ready for the holiday. And we turn on the TV and carefully (albeit for the tenth time!) watch some classic New Year's film - "Carnival Night", "The Irony of Fate", "Sorcerers". Why is it so important for us to watch this movie again and again? Celebrating the New Year in these films is a ritual duplication of the ongoing event; we are again faced with the fact that the ritual seeks to absorb the natural phenomenon that serves as the basis of the holiday.

And now New Year's Eve comes. The whole family gathers around the set table. The custom of putting a lavish treat on the New Year's table is now interpreted, if at all, within the framework of the “magic of the first day” - how you celebrate the New Year is how you will spend it. This subtext cannot be denied, but there is another behind it: this is not just a festive abundance of food, this is food of all kinds, and it symbolizes the whole world, everything that the earth will give birth to - and thus this food embodies the unity of the universe, and being distributed between the participants in the ritual (that is, eaten by the whole family), it becomes the magical embodiment of the unity of the family, its “total share”, common destiny. Let us emphasize this point once again: the purpose of the New Year's feast is not so much ensuring abundance as much as renewal and strengthening of connections between team members. Perhaps we, living in an era of tragic disunity among people, have something to learn from our “ignorant”, “superstitious” ancestors.

The last event of the outgoing year is the president's address to the people. Why does it have to happen exactly at these moments? Why should the head of state turn to us?

Before us is one of the last echoes of the ancient cult of leaders. The leader (no matter what specific title he bears) in the mythological consciousness is a mediator between the world of people and the higher spheres, therefore he is responsible for performing all the rituals that ensure correct contact between these two worlds. Through the leader, people turn to the gods, and gods to people. What do we want to hear from higher powers? - what the president will tell us: this year was difficult, but the next one will be good. Purely ritual speech!

And then the chimes strike, a bottle of champagne pops loudly, foamy glasses clink, and the anthem is heard from the TV. Sounds, sounds, sounds - they are the ones that accompany the transition from one year to another. Before us is a manifestation of the mythology “music as a means of opening the gates between worlds.” Both in myth and in ritual, a song and a melody are a magical bridge connecting the other world and the world of people. Let me remind you of just a few examples.

Orpheus sang in front of the throne of Hades, begging to return Eurydice to the world of the living - and Hades agreed (it was not God’s fault that Orpheus turned around and thereby violated the ban on meeting the gaze of a representative of the world of the dead). When Hermes, having kidnapped Apollo's cows, nevertheless agreed to return them to the god of light, he began to play the lyre while Apollo drove the cows out of the cave (that is, from the underworld).

The magical role of the game of Hermes is clearly visible in comparison with the Indian myth of cow theft: the demons of the underworld imprisoned them inside the rock, and the seven sages of Angiras came to free them along with the thunderer Indra, and the sages chanted sacred hymns - and by singing they broke through the rock, freeing the cows. In European fairy tales of Celtic origin, the appearance of elves is accompanied by the melodious ringing of bells or gentle music, and Altai shamans, on the contrary, themselves call the spirits by ringing bells. Not only are contacts between transcendental worlds carried out through sounding words or music, but the very creation of the world often appears as the first sound.

Thus, the Indian Shiva creates the world with a divine dance, but before the dance the voice of a small drum is heard, which the god holds in one of his right hands. The hero of the Karelian-Finnish epic "Kalevala" Väinemöinen creates prototypes of various things by singing, which are then used by all people. Across the ocean, in the epic of the Quiché (Mayan) Indians “Popol Vuh” it is said: “In the beginning everything was in silence,” and then the Word descends from the god Huracan to the earth. This cannot but recall the beginning of the Gospel of John, the philosophical predecessor of which was the ancient Egyptian monument " Memphis Theological Treatise", which says: "Nothing has existence without first receiving its name, pronounced loudly."

Against this background, all ritual songs and ritual music, especially loud and rhythmic ones, are perceived with special significance - for many peoples, any loud sounds serve as a magical means of dispersing evil spirits. By the way, one of these peoples is the Chinese, from whom in the last decade we have borrowed the custom of launching fireworks - not suspecting that the deafening noise of Chinese pyrotechnics is, from a ritual point of view, hardly anything more more significant than the lights.

From antiquity to this day, music has been a ritual entrance to any new state, and therefore everything is heard at holidays. The chimes and the clinking of glasses symbolically open the door to the coming year."