Trees of our childhood Automatic translate

On November 15, the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve opens the exhibition "Christmas Trees of Our Childhood". The exposition at the Palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich will bring together more than 800 items from museum and private collections, which will tell about the history of the main winter holiday in a way that will be interesting for the whole family.

“With its New Year projects, for more than ten years, the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve has been trying as accurately as possible to show the events of different years with the help of archival documents and museum exhibits and touch on topics little studied or uncovered due to the lack of visual material. For this exhibition, we managed to collect not only interesting facts and unusual exhibits, but also amazing stories. The unique photo and video materials from the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents became a feature and basis of the exposition, which formed the basis of eight plots - from pre-revolutionary to modern author’s Christmas trees, ”Natalia Polonnikova, historian, curator of the exhibition.

The exhibition covers the following topics: “Pre-revolutionary Christmas tree. The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century”, “Yolka Ilyich. 1918–1924”, “Fighting Christmas Trees?! 1925 - early 1930s", "New Year’s Moscow. 1935–1936”, “New Year holidays during the Great Patriotic War. 1941–1945”, “Kremlin Traditions. 1950–1960s”, “New Year’s streets and shops. 1970s - 1980s" and "Author’s Trees. Late 1990s - early 2000s.

Despite the fact that Christmas decorations in Russia began to be made in the second half of the 19th century, not very many decorations from this period have survived. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to see not only toys made of cotton wool, cardboard and glass, but also real rarities, some of which will be shown publicly for the first time. The exposition will feature Christmas tree decorations that belonged to the family of V. I. Lenin, from the collection of the Gorki Leninskiye Museum-Reserve and a number of items from private collections associated with the process of glorification of the Christmas decoration, which took place in the 1930s-1940s. Familiar to everyone, the Soviet-made New Year decor of the 1970s, Christmas tree decorations from the GDR and Czechoslovakia. For the first time, the theme of "Christmas Trees" with miniature toys will be touched upon. Modernity is represented by copies of Christmas tree decorations of the Soviet and pre-revolutionary period, Christmas balls from Zhostovo and Gorodets, majolica toys from Gzhel and Yaroslavl, Santa Clauses from Bogorodsky and many others. others

The archival film "Preparing for Christmas" (1927) from the RGAKFD shows beautifully decorated shop windows in Okhotny Ryad, and on Arbatskaya Square - a real Christmas tree market in the midst of anti-Christmas and anti-Christmas campaigns. In the film “Life as it is” (1929), the celebration of the New Year is shown at home: he is met with guests at a laid table, with a decorated Christmas tree, then they choose goods in a store, go skiing and ice skating. The wartime is reflected in the paintings of Yakov Protazanov "Christmas in the trenches" (1914) and Rafail Gikov "To defend native Moscow No. 6" (1941). At the exhibition you can see not only the front-line chronicle, but also the organization of New Year holidays in bomb shelters and for prisoners of war. In the chronicles of the 1930s, new heroes began to take part in the New Year celebrations: ice captains, order bearers, pilots and members of the CPSU (b). Later, with the advent of television, such events grew into Blue Lights. Visitors will be able to get acquainted with the history of the Lenin and the legendary Kremlin Christmas trees, learn about the history of thematic performances and their subsequent transformation.

In the exposition solution, you can see the outlines of the pavilion for holding New Year’s celebrations, which was built in 1936 on Manezhnaya Square. And also visit a store in the 1970s and take pictures in an imitation of a trading counter.

Project participants: Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve, Novgorod Museum-Reserve, Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda Museum-Reserve, Gorki Leninskiye Museum-Reserve, Dmitrovsky Kremlin Museum-Reserve, Museum of Toys. N. D. Bartram, Yelets City Museum of Local Lore, RGAKFD, GA RF, manufactory "Fragrant Joys" and private collections.