New Year under Peter I: why evergreen branches at the gates were not an indoor Christmas tree

Peter I’s New Year decree of 20 December 1699 declared 1 January the start of the year 1700 and ordered Moscow’s streets to be decorated with conifer trees and branches. The decorations were intended for gates and the exteriors of houses. The decree did not require decorated Christmas trees to be placed indoors: that custom spread in Russia later, in the 19th century.

New Year under Peter I is described in two decrees issued in December 1699: they set out how dates were to be written and the programme for the city’s celebrations. Evidence of Christmas trees in homes belongs to a later era. Comparing the documents shows where Peter’s decree ends and the later tradition begins.

What did Peter I change about the numbering of years?

From 1 January 1700, the civil year was to begin in January, and years in official documents were to be counted from the birth of Christ. Previously, the new year had fallen on 1 September, and documents had used a chronology dating from the Creation of the World. This was the essence of the calendar reform.

The decree is dated 20 December 1699 according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia; the Presidential Library gives the corresponding New Style date as 30 December. At the time of the reform, the year was 7208 under the old reckoning, while from 1 January the year was to be written as 1700. The tsar linked the change to the practice adopted in many Christian countries: different dating systems were causing discrepancies in official business.

Peter did not move Russia to the Gregorian calendar. That change was introduced by a separate decree in 1918. The decrees of 1699 changed the start of the civil year and the era from which years were counted, while retaining the difference between Julian and Gregorian dates. The church year continued to begin in September.

Why there were two December decrees

The calendar change was formalised in two consecutive documents. Decree No. 1735 of 19 December 1699 concerns how the year should be written in documents. The second decree, No. 1736, repeats the new rule for numbering years and sets out the arrangements for Moscow’s celebrations. These numbers come from the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, published in the 19th century.

The first decree lists the offices and records in which dates had legal significance: the Military Service Chancery and other government departments, charters, annotations, provincial governors’ registers, deeds and other official records. The term used for ‘deeds’ in this list, ‘kreposti’, refers to documents recording rights and transactions, rather than fortress walls: it appears alongside departmental records. The tsar proposed that, from the beginning of January 1700, years in such documents should be counted from the birth of Christ. Those who wished could also write the old year, counted from the Creation of the World, alongside it. The transition was thus framed as a new standard rule that permitted dual dating.

Why the date 20 December needs explaining

The date on Decree No. 1736 follows the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. The Presidential Library therefore records it as 20 (30) December 1699: in the Gregorian calendar, this was 30 December. In Russia, 1 January 1700 also fell on a different day from that in countries which had already adopted the New Style calendar. Having the same year number and first month did not yet mean that calendar dates fell on the same days.

A separate decree adopting the Western European calendar was not passed until 24 January (6 February) 1918. The Presidential Library explains the result through a simple sequence: in the civil calendar, 31 January 1918 was followed by 14 February, as the difference between the two calendars had reached 13 days. In the history of Peter’s decree, this later date serves precisely to avoid crediting Peter with a reform carried out more than two centuries afterwards.

The old September start of the year also survived in Orthodox practice. Civil dating and the religious calendar followed different rules. This distinction resolves an apparent contradiction in the sources: they may mention both the state’s January New Year and the church’s September start of the year, with each referring to its own system of timekeeping.

What decorations did the decree require at the gates?

In Moscow, gates and the areas outside houses were to be decorated with trees or branches of pine, spruce and juniper. In the published text of Decree No. 1736 mentions major streets and thoroughfares, and prominent householders of both ecclesiastical and secular rank. The specified location is outside, by the entrance; no room inside the home is mentioned in the order. Those of more modest means were allowed to make do with a single small tree or one branch above their gate or house.

The decree advised following the examples at Gostiny Dvor and the Lower Apothecary, while allowing the decorations to be adapted to the setting. The authorities showed residents a model for outdoor decoration, but did not require every householder to follow an identical design.

The decorations were to be ready by 1 January and remain in place until 7 January 1700. The period specified in the document applies specifically to the outdoor decorations. It does not tell us how long Moscow families kept the branches after the celebration, list the ornaments used on them, or provide grounds for imagining every courtyard looking the same. When reading a historical decree, it is important to distinguish between an instruction and evidence of how it was actually carried out.

What is known about the examples at Gostiny Dvor and the Lower Apothecary

Decree No. 1736 names Gostiny Dvor and the Lower Apothecary as models for decorating gates. However, the document does not specify what the proposed decorations looked like. The text cannot tell us whether there were individual trees, arches made of branches or other structures. Such a reconstruction would require an independent image or description.

What were Moscow’s celebrations of 1700 intended to look like?

The January start of the year was declared a public celebration for the city: the decree combined greetings, street decorations, illuminations and gunfire. After a prayer service, people were to congratulate one another on the new year and the ‘new century’. The document names Red Square as the place where fireworks and gunfire would begin, giving the signal to the rest of the city’s residents.

Noble householders who owned small cannons or firearms were ordered to fire three times and launch rockets as their household’s resources allowed. Along the main streets, wherever space permitted, from 1 to 7 January night-time fires were to be lit using firewood, brushwood or straw. Where courtyards were cramped, the decree provided for a shared bonfire serving five or six households; it also specifically mentioned tar barrels mounted on poles. These are details of the order, rather than a record confirming that every instruction was carried out everywhere.

The order had a clear logic in the city setting. The New Year became visible beyond the government records in which the date changed: passers-by saw conifer greenery at the gates, followed in the evening by lights and festive signals. In Moscow in 1700, the tsar needed to make the calendar change visible in public spaces. When the story is reduced to ‘Peter brought the Christmas tree’, this connection between administrative reform and street ceremony disappears.

What the accounts of 1 January confirm

Evidence about 1 January 1700 is not limited to the tsar’s decree. The research project ‘Biochronicle of Peter the Great’ at HSE University compares documents and reports that Peter attended the liturgy at the Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral. A gun salute and fireworks took place on Red Square, and the city was illuminated. The account quoted in the chronicle mentions regiments of soldiers and the firing of cannons and small arms.

This establishes the necessary distinction between the plan and the observed result. The order applied to the whole capital; the chronicle confirms several events in its centre. Neither the decree nor this account, however, provides an inventory of every decorated gate. It would be wrong to turn the fact of a salute on Red Square into a claim that every Moscow household followed every point of the tsar’s order to the letter.

Religious worship and secular spectacle stood side by side in that day’s programme. The chronicle also identifies 1 January as the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, while the decree’s programme begins after thanksgiving to God and a prayer service. It is therefore inaccurate to regard the January celebration as entirely non-religious. The state’s organisation of the New Year was secular; it took place in a society where church ritual continued to shape a significant part of the festive calendar.

Fyodor Polikarpov, whose observation is quoted in HSE University’s biochronicle, noted an oddity in the calendar transition: the old year 7208 had been left unfinished, yet 1700 had already begun. This is one contemporary’s view, rather than evidence of the mood of all Muscovites. The entry shows that people at the time noticed the abrupt change in the year’s designation.

Why is conifer greenery at the gates different from a Christmas tree in the home?

Street decorations and a Christmas tree in the home differ in location, purpose and arrangement. In the first case, the decree refers to gates, the exterior of the house and several species of conifer; in the second, the tree stands indoors and is decorated by the family for the holiday. Using the same material, a spruce branch, does not in itself make these two customs one and the same.

Peter’s text contains no requirement to bring a tree into a living room, set it up for children, or decorate it with candles or gifts. The word ‘tree’ appears alongside ‘branch’ in the instructions for outdoor decoration. The decree’s silence does not allow us to conclude that no home in Russia had a festive tree in 1700; the document simply does not describe domestic life.

The Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve, in its material for the exhibition ‘Three Centuries of the Russian Christmas Tree’ places these developments in distinct periods. It first discusses the calendar decree, illuminations and evergreen decorations of the early 18th century. The museum then explains separately that the custom of putting up a decorated Christmas tree at home spread gradually through Russia during the 19th century. The fact that these developments appear side by side in a single festive narrative does not imply an unbroken domestic tradition dating back to Peter’s reign.

The two occasions in the calendar must also be kept distinct. For people in the 18th century, Christmas remained primarily a religious celebration, while welcoming the New Year in January acquired a secular form. The later family Christmas tree was associated above all with the December celebration. Today’s understanding of the festive tree developed from several layers of tradition; the decree of 1699 explains only one of them.

What became of the outdoor evergreen symbol in the 18th century

The custom introduced by Peter of decorating Moscow’s gates did not develop into an unbroken domestic tradition. The philologist Elena Dushechkina, who studied the history of the Russian Christmas tree, writes that widespread observance of his recommendation faded after his death. One notable trace of the outdoor spruce survived in the decoration of drinking establishments: a tree at the entrance or on the roof helped identify a tavern. The spruce could thus remain a symbol in the city without becoming part of the Christmas sitting room.

Dushechkina also cites literary evidence of this association. In Pushkin’s ‘The History of the Village of Goryukhino’, a spruce appears beside a public building along with an image of a double-headed eagle; the researcher explains that the building is a tavern. In Dmitry Grigorovich’s 1847 novella ‘Anton the Unfortunate’, a tree stands beside a roadside cottage. These are literary scenes rather than a precise inventory of Moscow’s taverns in 1700, but they attest to a different, outdoor use of spruce in later everyday life.

Small spruce trees also appear in depictions of festive ice slides from the 18th and 19th centuries, marking the edges of the slope. The object was the same, but its purpose was different: to make the boundaries of a winter amusement visible. Combining the tree at the gate, outside the tavern, beside the slide and inside the home into a single narrative can easily create a false impression of an unchanging ritual. Dushechkina’s research helps place these images in the context of different settings and activities.

A later illustration can also distort the chronology. Elena Dushechkina examines a drawing from the 1889 Christmas issue of Niva: the artist placed a decorated Christmas tree in a scene of a festive evening during Christmastide in 1789. The researcher considers this detail an anachronism, since there is no evidence of a family Christmas tree in Russian interiors of the late 18th century. The image reflects a familiar idea held by a 19th-century artist, rather than the furnishings of a home a century earlier.

This chronology does not require us to assume that evergreens disappeared entirely from the city after Peter’s reign, or that the new domestic tree developed directly from the tavern sign. Establishing a causal link between different practices requires documentary evidence that the decree itself does not provide. The sound conclusion is more modest and precise: outdoor spruce trees continued to serve their own purposes, while the family Christmas custom entered Russian life by a different route.

When did the decorated tree become part of celebrations at home?

Decorated Christmas trees became increasingly common in Russian homes throughout the 19th century. The Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve attributes this process largely to the example set by the imperial family. More than a century separates the outdoor evergreens of 1700 from the familiar family tree; the sources do not establish a single date when this tradition first appeared in Russia.

The Kolomenskoye exhibition associates the establishment of the custom at court with Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I, who had known it since her childhood in Prussia.

The exhibition presents one account of a Christmas tree in Moscow in 1817 and another of one at the Anichkov Palace in 1819. Elena Dushechkina’s article dates the Moscow occasion to 1818 and the St Petersburg one to the following year. The one-year discrepancy concerns the chronology of court life; none of these dates proves that this was the first time a festive tree had been put up in any home in the country. Establishing that would require a complete picture of private domestic life, which the sources do not provide.

What is known about the Christmas tree at court in 1828

The court celebration of 1828 is described in greater detail than the presumed gatherings of 1817–1819. According to Elena Dushechkina’s research, Alexandra Feodorovna arranged a Christmas tree celebration for her children and nieces, inviting the children of some courtiers as well. This is evidence of a particular family celebration at court, rather than a date marking the spread of the custom to Russian homes.

Several small trees were placed on tables in the Great Dining Room, decorated with sweets, gilded apples and nuts, with presents arranged nearby. The room’s arrangement shows what a children’s Christmas evening at court looked like in 1828. Peter’s decree concerned decorating the outside of gates to welcome January 1700.

The intended participants, setting, objects being decorated and meaning of the celebration all differed. Peter’s decree makes no mention of children, presents or laid tables bearing little trees. By 1828, the court was already setting an example of a family Christmas tree celebration that other households could later adopt.

What a private diary reveals about Christmas trees beyond the capitals

The court celebration is not the only early evidence of Christmas trees in the home. In Alexei Wulf’s diary there is an entry about a trip to Staritsa in Tver Province in December 1828. Wulf had learnt beforehand that Colonel Tornau, who commanded the Orenburg Uhlan Regiment stationed there, was preparing a Christmas tree celebration for the children and a ball for the adults on Christmas Eve. When writing down the foreign term Weihnachtsbaum, Wulf immediately explained it with the Russian word ‘yolka’, meaning ‘Christmas tree’.

A later diary entry records that the author visited Tornau on Christmas Eve and spent the evening among the guests. However, he focused on acquaintances and dancing, leaving no description of the festive decorations. The diary therefore confirms the intention to arrange a children’s Christmas tree celebration in Staritsa and the author’s presence that evening, but it does not allow us to reconstruct the tree’s height, its ornaments or the order in which presents were handed out. This is rare evidence of a celebration outside the court circles of the capitals, rather than statistics on the spread of the custom through provincial towns.

In the same account, Wulf distinguished the next occasion in the calendar from Christmas Eve: he welcomed the New Year at a ball hosted by his neighbour Yermolaev. The two celebrations took place in different homes and followed different programmes. This private document shows particularly clearly why a festive tree from the first half of the 19th century cannot automatically be called a New Year tree: Wulf associates it with a children’s Christmas evening, while describing the New Year celebrations separately.

How newspapers and letters document the spread of the custom

Dushechkina observes that accounts of Christmastide celebrations in the 1820s and 1830s generally make no mention of a Christmas tree. This silence does not in itself prove that the custom was absent from every home, but it shows that journalists and writers did not yet regard it as an essential part of a family celebration. The newspaper Severnaya Pchela, which regularly covered Christmas books and presents, reported the sale of decorated Christmas trees only shortly before the beginning of 1840.

Early private evidence survives in the Herzen family’s correspondence. In a letter from early January 1842, Natalia told a friend about preparing a festive tree for her young son Sasha, noting that it was her own first experience of doing so. The researcher also mentions an unsigned watercolour, ‘Sasha Herzen by the Christmas Tree’, held at the A. I. Herzen Museum in Moscow; according to Dushechkina’s description, Alexander Herzen wrote on the reverse: ‘1841. December 29. Novgorod’. The letter from early 1842 and the dated image thus provide two closely related pieces of evidence about a single domestic celebration, rather than a general date for the spread of the tradition in Russia.

By 1842, the children’s magazine Zvyozdochka, published by Alexandra Ishimova, was explaining the German custom of decorating a festive tree to its readers. Elena Dushechkina cites this account in her study ‘The Russian Christmas Tree’: adults prepared the tree in secret from the children, decorating it with ribbons, apples, gilded nuts, sweets and candles. The article described not simply the presence of evergreens in a room, but the entire sequence of a family evening. Even the phrase ‘in many homes’ should be read as the author’s observation, rather than a count of households in Russia.

Zvyozdochka also distinguished between the old and new ways of giving children Christmas presents. Previously, presents might have been handed over during the morning Christmas greetings; with the introduction of the tree, they began to be arranged beside or beneath it, each labelled with the recipient’s name. This reveals another verifiable element of the domestic celebration: presents had existed before, but the new practice changed where and when they were given. Peter’s order concerning Moscow’s gates says nothing about children’s presents, their recipients or the preparation of a room.

From the late 1830s, St Petersburg confectioners sold Christmas trees already decorated with lanterns, sweets and toys. In the late 1840s, peasants began bringing trees from the surrounding forests to Gostiny Dvor; Elena Dushechkina distinguishes between an expensive, ready-decorated festive item and an undecorated tree that a family could dress themselves.

Advertisements help date the appearance of Christmas trees for sale. In late 1839, Severnaya Pchela named specific St Petersburg sellers of ready-decorated trees: the confectioners Dominique and Pfeiffer. The following year, the newspaper was explaining the children’s celebration to its readers under its German name Weihnachtsbaum. This sequence matters: the product had gone on sale, but the custom itself still needed explaining. The existence of two retail addresses tells us nothing about how many families actually bought a tree.

A ready-decorated Christmas tree was expensive. Elena Dushechkina cites prices from St Petersburg advertisements: from 20 to 200 roubles in assignation banknotes for a decorated tree. By the late 1840s, undecorated trees were also sold at the market, but a family celebration still required candles, sweets and presents. The fact that a confectioner stocked the product does not mean that every family could afford to adopt the custom: early advertisements were aimed primarily at wealthy buyers.

The Christmas tree also spread through books that showed readers what it looked like. In 1840, Vissarion Belinsky reviewed a St Petersburg collection entitled ‘A New Year’s Gift. Two Tales by Hoffmann’, which included a Russian translation of the story now known as ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’. Elena Dushechkina describes an illustration in a small edition of the tale. It shows a German room: a tree with candles stands on a table, presents lie beneath it, the children have just entered, and their parents are watching them. Such a picture offered a visual impression of a family celebration even to someone who had never seen a Christmas tree in an acquaintance’s home. It shows one way people encountered the custom, but does not in itself prove that Russian readers immediately recreated the scene in their own homes.

In 1845, the writer and educator Anna Daragan published a reading primer entitled ‘The Christmas Tree. A Christmas Gift’. At the end of the first part, she promised children a Christmas tree as a reward for their progress and explained separately that the tree could bear sweets, fruit, gingerbread and candles, with toys underneath. The primer is interesting for its dual purpose: it addressed families already willing to link the celebration with children’s learning, while also explaining something still unfamiliar. The decree of 1699 required no such explanation of a domestic ritual: it set townspeople a different task, out in the streets.

There is another important limit to what nineteenth-century sources about Christmas trees can tell us. A newspaper advertisement proves that a buyer could find a tree at a particular place; a magazine explains the recommended arrangements for a family celebration; a diary records only what its author knew and thought worth writing down. None of these genres provides a comprehensive survey of households. Yet their independent details — a seller, children’s presents, an advertised evening in Staritsa — allow us to trace the spread of the custom more precisely than an attempt to identify a single definitive year of its ‘appearance’.

Yakov Polonsky’s memoirs show how the novelty spread beyond St Petersburg. According to Dushechkina’s account, the future poet had not seen a Christmas tree in Ryazan until around 1838; a few years later, young women educated at the Smolny Institute brought the custom from the capital. This is evidence about one city and one circle of acquaintances: it allows us to trace the tradition’s spread, but offers no single date for the provinces as a whole.

How the tree itself changed inside the home

Early domestic Christmas trees were often small and stood on a table in the best room. Adults prepared the tree for Christmas Eve, attached candles and sweets, laid out presents and only then let the children in. What matters here is not simply the type of evergreen, but a whole sequence of actions: preparations made in secret, a family gathering, the giving of gifts. No such ritual took place at the gates of a Moscow home under the decree of 1699.

By the late 1840s, wealthy St Petersburg households were putting up trees that reached the ceiling. A large spruce was secured in a stand and moved from the table to the floor, sometimes to the centre of the drawing room. According to Dushechkina’s research, the tree’s height changed the way the celebration was organised: guests gathered around it, and children’s parties were held. The familiar silhouette of a tall tree in a room emerged during the nineteenth century.

Materials for the exhibition at Kolomenskoye list ornaments, postcards, invitations, festive menus and figures placed beneath the tree among objects from different periods. These objects allow the history of everyday life to be examined through a different set of sources: they can reveal how trees were decorated and who gathered for the celebrations. An exhibit from the late nineteenth or twentieth century, however, cannot be used as a depiction of a Moscow courtyard in 1700. It bears witness to its own time rather than filling gaps in an earlier document.

In 1852, according to Elena Dushechkina’s research, a decorated Christmas tree was put up for the public at St Petersburg’s Ekateringof Vokzal. At the time, ‘vokzal’ meant an entertainment pavilion in a garden outside the city. From the early 1850s, Christmas tree parties were also held at Moscow’s Assembly of the Nobility. The practice had moved from the family circle into public spaces, but this development belongs to the nineteenth century.

Dushechkina describes the 1852 celebration at the Ekateringof Vokzal: an enormous tree stood in the hall with one side against the wall, while its visible side was decorated with pieces of coloured paper. From the 1860s, Christmas tree celebrations became commonplace in schools and other educational institutions. Family celebrations, public gatherings and school festivities had different organisers and audiences, although all three used evergreens.

Why it is so easy to project today’s image of the festive tree back onto Peter the Great

In the twentieth century, the festive tree’s principal place in the calendar changed once again. After the civil calendar adopted the New Style in 1918, the order of the holidays changed: civil New Year’s Day on 1 January now came before Orthodox Christmas on 7 January. In the late 1920s, public celebrations of Christmas and the associated Christmas tree custom were restricted. This did not mean that all families immediately abandoned the tree: Dushechkina describes evidence of its survival in the home.

28 December 1935 saw the publication in Pravda of a short article by Pavel Postyshev proposing New Year tree celebrations for children; her study gives the date and text of the publication. From then on, the custom became associated primarily with the secular January celebration. A decree of 23 December 1947 made 1 January a public holiday and a day off work. These were separate events: the revival of public celebrations for children and a change in the status of a calendar date.

It is therefore difficult to regard the modern New Year tree as a direct continuation of the gate decorations prescribed by Peter the Great. The decrees of 1699 established January as the start of the year, decorated trees in the home became widespread in the nineteenth century, and the secular celebration centred on them became established in the twentieth. This conclusion comes from comparing documents and research; the decree of 1699 itself contains no such history.

What can we say with confidence about Peter the Great’s ‘Christmas tree’?

We can say with confidence that Peter I’s decree ordered Moscow’s gates and streets to be decorated with conifer branches to welcome the year 1700. It specified that the decorations should remain until 7 January, allowed a single branch to suffice, and listed pine, spruce and juniper. The decree does not describe a decorated tree inside the home; that tradition can be traced through later, nineteenth-century accounts.

The phrase ‘the Christmas tree under Peter I’ needs an important qualification: his document refers to spruce greenery as part of outdoor festive decorations. If it is taken to mean the familiar decorated tree in a room, the phrase is misleading. To understand the distinction, it helps to ask what the source actually describes: a date in the calendar, conifer branches at the gates, a family celebration or a public gathering?

The decree describes the festive programme in detail, but does not tell us how every Moscow home was decorated. It presents Gostiny Dvor as a model to follow without describing its decorations. Separate evidence is needed to confirm how the decree was actually carried out at any particular location.

For those who would like to explore Moscow’s winter traditions further, the bureau offers the ‘Journey into Christmas’ tour. The history of the decree helps distinguish the city’s decorations in 1700 from the Christmas tree found in nineteenth-century homes.

Sources

1. Presidential Library: ‘1 January declared a public holiday and a day off’
2. Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve: ‘Three Centuries of the Russian Christmas Tree’
3. Presidential Library: ‘The Presidential Library on New Year Celebrations’
4. Electronic Library of Historical Documents: personal decree No. 1735 of 19 December 1699
5. Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, Decree No. 1735 (text)
6. Presidential Library: decree on the transition to the Gregorian calendar
7. HSE University: Biographical Chronicle of Peter the Great, 1 January 1700
8. Elena Dushechkina: ‘Three Centuries of the Russian Christmas Tree’, Part 1
9. Elena Dushechkina: ‘Three Centuries of the Russian Christmas Tree’, Part 2
10. Alexey Wulf. Diary, 1827–1842 (published text)
11. Elena Dushechkina. The Russian Christmas Tree: History, Mythology, Literature
12. Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, Decree No. 1736 of 20 December 1699
13. Don State Public Library: Anna Daragan, ‘The Christmas Tree. A Christmas Gift’
14. Vissarion Belinsky: ‘On Children’s Books’ (1840)
15. Federal Notary Chamber: stages in the development of the notarial profession
16. Presidential Library: ‘The first New Year tree celebration took place in Moscow’