All good things for humankind, plants and animals
Our forebears originally celebrated the beginning of the new year on 6 January. From the middle of the 4th century the celebration of Christmas and New Year was combined, with joint festivities on 25 December. It was only at the end of the 17th century that the beginning of the year was designated as 1 January.
The New Year customs and practices of our ancestors were linked to acts of magic, which supposedly served to promote health and good fortune, fertility and everything good for people and their natural environment, covering the plant and animal kingdoms. This understanding of the beginning of the new year and the purpose of celebrating it was not just a facet of rural folk, but also of urban
areas. All of this became enshrined relatively slowly in the iconography of idyllic representations of popular animals (foxes and bears with cubs), which would exchange New Year gifts around a decorated spruce tree.
New authorities and one more tree cult
Starting in 1945, the authorities began introducing the New Year’s fir tree alongside the Christmas tree, which was traditionally a spruce originating from protestant northern Europe. This was not just a decorated fir with lights, decorations and gifts, but was originally also the title of the holiday, presented as the New Year Fir and written with capital first letters.
The purpose of instigating the New Year Fir was to establish a new holiday that would gradually replace in the public arena the banned celebrations of St Nicholas and Christmas. Those two celebrations thus retreated into the intimacy of the family circle, especially after 1952. At that time, in place of the New Year Fir, which had become the recognisable tree of the New Year festivities, the figure of Grandfather Frost (Dedek Mraz) was introduced. Despite the deep roots of the Christmas celebration, the authorities of that time made great efforts to involve the new celebration in the family setting, but their efforts were in vain. Curiously, a highly idealised report in a newspaper from 1952 states: “This year for the first time since the liberation we will celebrate the New Year Fir
in the wide circle of our families as a family holiday. But I don’t mean to say that we are introducing into our families something new. The celebration of the New Year Fir in the family should therefore be in truth a celebration of our family. May it be a celebration of happy and joyful families – the basic cells of our great socialist community, which nurture happy people and good citizens.”
Prof. Janez Bogataj
