On the 12th of January 2014 the citizens got the first chance to take part in the celebrations of the Russian Old New Year at Nørrebro. Our organization, Worlds Women in Denmark, arranged the event together with three other Russian organizations.
There was a lot of entertainment with folkdance, music, children’s performance, the New Year tree and the Father Frost together with the Snowgirl, homemade Russian food, funny games, lottery, quiz and what not. The audience could learn the history of The Old Russian New Year and its folk traditions.
There were about 300 citizens of Copenhagen who came behind and saw the show. There was a very good mood which you can feel when you look at the event’s photos on our homepage.
But the meaning of the event was not only to gather people for a cozy company which could be done under more private circumstances. The organization, Worlds Women in Denmark, has used so many means to organize the celebrations at the Superkilen to make one of our targets, i.e. to create cultural understanding, more visible.
The Queen of Denmark said in her New Year’s speech “Though Demark is a small country, we should be careful not to be a petty country.” We think that the only way for not to be a petty country in the modern globalized world is to learn each other and enrich each other.
What can we learn from the Russian people and the Russian traditions? If you read the names of the members who arranged the event, you can see that we are not only Russians. We are Kazakhs, Armenians, Ukrainians and many others. This is what we call the strongest part of the Russian/ Soviet culture – it has always been enriched of people of many different backgrounds. We can name the best Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin who had roots in Africa, or the author of the first Russian vocabulary, Oleg Dahl, who had Danish ancestors. We think that with being more internationally oriented and more open for other people and their cultural heritage we can contribute to the developing of Denmark and Danish culture.