Missing that overindulgent Christmas feeling already? Fed up with the penance of January? Rewind time by a month. And the easiest way to do this is with a flight to Russia, where Christmas Day falls on January 7 and celebrations last throughout the month.
St Petersburg, in particular, dazzles. Russia’s gilt-edged city becomes particularly supermodel-like this month, when hundreds of fairy lights wend their way down the boulevards. The pastel-coloured palaces look almost vivid against the snow, and ice-skating parties pop up along the canals.
“Christmas celebrations were restricted during the Soviet Union and attendance in the churches was really low,” says Kate Arkind, a St Petersburg-born art adviser, on why Russian festivities today are particularly lavish in comparison to the past.
The events of a century ago also explain why Russian Christmas falls in the New Year. When the Bolsheviks decided to switch to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian one in 1918, they wiped off 13 days from February that year. The Orthodox Church was not pleased and has stubbornly followed the Julian calendar ever since.
“The Russian holiday season begins properly on December 31, when we see in the New Year,” says Arkind. “Under Orthodox tradition, our 40-day fast is supposed to end when the first star appears in the sky on Christmas Eve. It was a huge celebration under Catherine the Great, and while people rarely fast today we definitely still feast.”
Around St Petersburg, tables groan under platters of stuffed pig’s head and roast goose with apples. At restaurants such as Teplo and Mansarda, lavish Christmas menus start with every meat course imaginable, pies and pirogi, and ending with cakes, sweets and puddings. Stick two fingers to Dry January and wash down platters with vodka.
At Christmas markets the smell of garlicky borscht mixes with the scent of gingerbread. There are markets on Moskovskaya Square, Pionerskaya Square and Gatchina Palace, and outside the Church of the Savior on Blood (it is more festive than it sounds). “Buy local honey, vareniye (jam) made of different berries and traditional Russian clothes such as varezhki (gloves) and valenki (winter shoes),” says Olga Kachalova, concierge of the Four Seasons Hotel Lion Palace. “And don’t miss a ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre.”
The Mariinsky hosted the first production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in 1892. Every Christmas it puts on another lavish performance, with tickets going for as little as £18 each. Or listen to the choir at the Preobrazhensky cathedral, on the edge of the historic centre. Walk there through the Summer Garden to the sound of chiming bells.
In January, once temperatures hit minus 15C, the Neva River turns solid, allowing skaters to lace up their boots. If you yearn for the comfort of a man-made rink, go to New Holland — a hipster island made up of galleries, sleek clothing shops, vodka bars and an ice-skating rink looking out to the Baltic.
The brave should pack a swimming costume. Epiphany, which falls on January 19, sees thousands of Russians strip off, crack open a hole in the icy river and jump in. Vodka shots are handed out afterwards, but to really warm your cockles get a taxi to the Coachmen’s Banya. This steam bath built in 1850 has welcomed everyone from Lenin to Dostoevsky. Treatments are less soothing massage and more terrifying branch-thwacking from a burly attendant.
For pure loveliness, nothing beats the palaces under thick snow. There’s Tsarskoe Selo, with its blue-gold-white rococo architecture, Yusupov Palace — where Rasputin was fed cakes laced with cyanide — and Gatchina Palace, where actors recreate festive receptions from the Imperial era. Outside the Hermitage Museum and in front of the Peterhof and Catherine Palaces, towering Christmas trees twinkle under the sky. Take a troika carriage ride through the parklands of Catherine Palace — the clatter of horse hooves breaks the silence of the forest and the view of the palace is magical. If St Petersburg is one enormous work of art, then Christmas is its most beautifully curated exhibition.
Details:
Aeroflot and British Airways fly from London Heathrow to St Petersburg from £150 return. British and EU nationals will need a visa. The Four Seasons Hotel Lion Palace (fourseasons.com/st petersburg) has doubles from £213 a night.
