Christmas in Russia

How Russia celebrates Christmas

The Russian winter holidays are a double festival. New Year, Novy God, on the night of 31 December is the biggest celebration of the year for most families, with the tree, presents, a long festive dinner and fireworks. Christmas, Rozhdestvo Khristovo, follows a week later on 7 January and is a quieter, more religious occasion, marked by the Christmas Eve fast, night-time church services and visits to family.

Both fall within the statutory New Year holidays. Under the Labour Code, 1 to 8 January are non-working days, with 7 January as Christmas, and each year the government moves weekend days to lengthen the break. Government decree No. 1187 of 17 September 2026 sets the 2026–27 holidays from 31 December 2026 to 10 January 2027, eleven days in all, with work resuming on 11 January.

Why Russian Christmas is on 7 January

The Russian Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar for its feasts, while the state has used the Gregorian calendar since 1918. The two calendars are now 13 days apart, so the Church's Christmas, 25 December by the Julian reckoning, falls on 7 January in the civil calendar. The gap grows by one day in 2101, when the Julian Christmas will move to 8 January.

Christmas became a non-working day again at the end of the Soviet era: a resolution of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in December 1990 made Orthodox Christmas a day off, and 7 January 1991 was the first such holiday. Today Russia's Catholics and Protestants, a small minority, celebrate on 25 December, which is an ordinary working day.

The Soviet legacy: from Christmas tree to New Year tree

Before 1917, the decorated Christmas tree was a well-established custom in Russian towns, popularised at the imperial court in the 19th century by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the Prussian-born wife of Nicholas I. After the revolution, religious holidays were discouraged, and in 1929 Christmas was abolished as a holiday and the tree was condemned as a religious custom.

The tree returned in 1935. On 28 December that year, the Communist Party official Pavel Postyshev published a letter in Pravda calling for trees to be set up for the young at New Year. From then on the yolka (fir tree) was a secular New Year tree, and the presents, the festive meal and the gift-bringer Ded Moroz all moved to New Year's Eve. That is why, even now that Christmas is a public holiday again, most Russian families put up their tree and exchange presents for New Year.

Novy God: New Year's Eve

On 31 December, families and friends gather for a long dinner that begins before midnight. Shortly before twelve, the president's televised New Year address is broadcast, usually filmed against the Kremlin, followed by the chimes of the Spasskaya Tower clock. Many Russians make a wish during the twelve strokes, then raise a glass of sparkling wine. The table is crowded with salads, above all Olivier salad and herring under a fur coat. Through the holidays, television repeats much-loved Soviet comedies, above all Eldar Ryazanov's 1975 film The Irony of Fate.

New Year greetings, S Novym godom!, are exchanged far more widely than Christmas greetings, and cards and messages fly between friends and colleagues in the last days of December. For anyone sending wishes, deepestfeelings.com has free Novy God greetings and New Year 2027 cards, including WhatsApp and Instagram status images, quote cards and ready-to-send messages for Happy New Year 2027.

The holiday has a sequel: Old New Year, Stary Novy God, the New Year by the Julian calendar, is celebrated informally on the night of 13 to 14 January, and some families keep their tree up until then.

Ded Moroz and Snegurochka

Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost, brings the presents on New Year's Eve. Tall and long-bearded, he wears a long fur-trimmed coat, often blue, red or white, and carries a staff. Unlike Santa Claus, he does not come down the chimney: he is often met in person at New Year parties and at the great public yolki, New Year shows, held in theatres and halls across the country.

He travels with his granddaughter Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, a figure who owes much to Alexander Ostrovsky's play The Snow Maiden and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera based on it. In 1998 the then Mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, declared Veliky Ustyug, an old town in Vologda Oblast in northern Russia, to be the home of Ded Moroz; his residence there has since become a winter tourist destination.

Sochelnik: Christmas Eve on 6 January

Orthodox Christmas Eve, Sochelnik, on 6 January is the last and strictest day of the Nativity Fast, which lasts forty days. By tradition, believers eat nothing until the first star appears in the evening sky, a reminder of the star of Bethlehem. The supper that follows is meatless, and traditionally begins with sochivo, boiled wheat or barley grains with honey, poppy seed and dried fruit. The dish gave the day its name; in some regions it is also known as kutya.

In the evening and through the night, churches hold the festive services of the Nativity. In the past, young people went from house to house after supper singing kolyadki, carols wishing the household well, and received treats in return. Folk fortune-telling was also widespread on this night, though the Church never approved of it.

Rozhdestvo: Christmas Day

On 7 January, the fast is over and meat returns to the table. The pre-revolutionary Christmas table was famous for its abundance: roast pork or goose, kholodets (jellied meat), pies such as pirozhki and vatrushki, blini and kalachi (ring-shaped loaves), washed down with sbiten, a hot honey drink, kompot and kissel. Today Christmas Day is mostly spent with family, visiting relatives and, for believers, at church. Because it falls within the New Year holidays, many people also use the days for winter outings, skating and trips.

Svyatki and Kreshchenie

The days from Christmas to Epiphany are the Svyatki, the holy days. Traditionally this was the time for kolyadovanie, carol singing from house to house, often by masked groups, as well as for visiting, sledging and, among young women, fortune-telling about future husbands.

The season ends with Kreshchenie, the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, on 19 January (6 January in the Julian calendar). On the eve and the day of the feast, priests bless water in churches and at holes cut in the ice of rivers and lakes, often in the shape of a cross and called iordan after the river Jordan. Many people then plunge into the icy water. The Russian Orthodox Church stresses that this bathing is a folk custom, not a church rite, and is not required of believers; emergency services publish safety rules each year.

Traditional Russian Christmas and New Year food

Russian Christmas season dates 2026–27

Christmas in Russia: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries