And The Nutcracker inspired the most famous ballet in history, one seen by millions in the twilight of every year. The Night Before Christmas brought forth some of our earliest Christmas traditions as passed down through folk tales. At first I didn’t know quite what to think of it, but as I settled in, the antics of the characters were so entertaining that the story quickly became one of my favourites. The holiday tales of Louisa May Alcott shaped the ideal of an American Christmas.
Add to that threats of suicide, the Tsaritsa’s (Catherine the Great) golden boots and a passel of Cossacks and you have yourself quite a tale. The tale carries on describing the town witch who is visited by certain men of the town for her favours (including the church deacon), a man who is in love with the beauty of the town who treats him with derision and scorn, sacks full of men (and the devil), and a flight to Saint Petersburg on the devil’s back. The Devil appears on a snowy Christmas Eve in the village of Dikanka in the Ukraine, determined to make trouble and begins by stealing the moon from the winter night sky. The Night Before Christmas by Nikolay Gogol, 9780143122487, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide. The story is so bizarre that I won’t describe the storyline in full, but suffice it to say, Gogol populates his tale with characters who display the same Russian extremes of emotion and action that we often experience in Russian novels. Winter Scene in Little Russia (1868) Ivan Aivazovsky
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