They were decorated with pieces of cotton, spent cartridges, shoulder straps and cartridges, cigarettes, silhouettes of parachutes and tanks glued from scraps of paper.
Lend-Lease labels.
Photographs of loved ones.
Those who, perhaps, in those days and hours were no longer alive.
The stubs of pre-war candles were lit on them.
They were illuminated by the smoky light of oil lamps.
There is no power in the world that can turn a person away from the spirit of the holiday.
The cruelest war and close, at every moment possible death, have no power over the passionate desire for happiness in spite of everything.
Every year, decorating the Christmas tree, plunging into the December atmosphere of confusion and pleasant worries, remember this.
Remember that there were such New Years in the history of our Fatherland, from the repetition of which may the will of heaven and the course of history save us ...
In December 1941, Moscow was still in a state of siege, although our counteroffensive was underway, although they were pushing the enemy back from the city walls.
However, despite the front-line status, the authorities in Moscow have declared it mandatory to hold New Year trees for children in almost all operating theaters, houses of culture and houses of pioneers.
They prepared as best they could: the military brought tall Christmas trees from the near Moscow region, bakeries and confectionery factories from everything that was, baked muffins, made multi-colored caramel, Mosprom enterprises made toys from any material at hand.
You still meet them among cotton wool and tinsel in old boxes of parents, who inherited sailboats and dragonflies from wartime, airplanes and flowers, skillfully twisted from wire scraps, strangely shaped balls - they are also lamps, only without a base, blown on Moscow Lamp Factory.
Tangerines!
Each child was relied on as a gift tangerines - Abkhazian yellow-green, sour and incredibly fragrant, they most strongly reminded of the time of the world, which seemed to have disappeared almost forever ...
Music at children's holidays was provided not only by full-time (and what was left of them - many were called to the front) musicians, but also by regimental orchestras, front-line propaganda teams - all those who were nearby and were ready to sing and play with a lump in their throat, even if you accordionist with a three-row.
"The Forest Raised a Christmas Tree..."
"Indestructible wall, steel defense..."
What was it like for them, those adults?
Did everyone’s families survive by that time, did everyone know where their relatives were, could they send them news? days are more valuable than eternity, and moments of happiness far outweigh any earthly treasures.
Those treasures, whoever could, Muscovites carried to the points of delivery of precious metals - to help the front.
"In unison!"
- these are not empty words for many today, but in those days ... And what is especially important, the state showed with all its might that it was ready to fight for every scrap of peaceful life to the last: a week before the New Year, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decided to postpone the day of rest from Sunday, December 28, 1941 to Thursday, January 1, 1942.
Or you could just cancel!
It's like knowing about the inevitable fight, terrible and deadly, the one that will happen a short time later here, at the threshold of your house, and yet put candles on the table, get the best dishes, cook everything that was found in stocks, and set the table: to someone to a feast, to someone to a happy deliverance, and to everyone without exception - to a single, for all, one Victory.
How did they live?
How were you happy?
How did you survive and win?
Here's something for us to think about...
Children (always, and we have nothing to argue here) are hostages of the deeds of adults.
As much as we want, we can explain to them and to ourselves: “That was the time.
So it was necessary.
We couldn't do it any other way...”, it doesn't make my soul feel any better.
“Our cause is just, the enemy will be defeated, victory will be ours!”
The children of the Land of Soviets believed in Victory.
They believed in her.
Sometimes stronger than adults.
Children's faith in miracles and justice is indestructible.
Perhaps it was through their prayers that we won then.
Perhaps that is why, in the most terrible days of the Great Patriotic War, adult men who stood at the helm of the state sometimes made decisions that seemed to go against the iron logic of the moment, with the inexorability of wartime ...
The first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee and the city party committee, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, a responsible person to the extreme and unusually modest in everyday life, monitored the supply of the besieged Leningrad daily and hourly - he, in fact, lived in the office and all decisions on emergency (that did not fit into the usual logic) I took the deliveries myself.
December apples (they were summer ones, they were brought along Ladoga in December) Zhdanov refused to let them through - the city needed flour and fats first of all: “Only by overfulfilling the plan, only in excess of the delivery rate.”
It was impossible to deceive Zhdanov (the word is inappropriate, sorry), and therefore the plan was overfulfilled, the apples were taken in broad daylight and even taken to the city - sorry, they were bombed with an almost direct hit.
Sweet apple snow could be collected by hand and eaten...
There is grief that is heavy and hopeless.
And sometimes there is such a misfortune that there is no strength to breathe ...
Leningrad was breathing.
Lived and fought.
Leningrad, by exerting all its strength (and how many there were, it’s not for me to tell you) gathered food reserves for holiday dinners and gifts.
The military brought (how and where did they get it?) A thousand Christmas trees, the most beautiful and tall ones were given to the homes of pioneers, theaters.
Smaller Christmas trees were taken to bomb shelters - it was safer and more reliable there.
Initially, one day was designated for celebration - January 1, but then, every next day, snatching from the war, they tried to spend as much as they could - two, three, four more holidays.
It is impossible to read the memoirs of Leningrad children, there is not enough for such breathing, but this must be done.
And it would be better - every year, in the days of December.
How children washed themselves (not the way we wash every day of God) and put themselves in at least some order, quite unexpectedly receiving an invitation from the postman or messenger to the New Year's holiday (a real printed ticket!), In frost-bitten apartments, sticking out of multi-layered clothes one by one, then the other hand ... How patiently they watched the performance, every minute thinking about the festive dinner ... How they ate half, and what they could take with them was carried to relatives ...
We still don't understand this.
So at least try.
Each little Leningrader was given one tangerine as a gift.
Yellow-green, smelling of the future life, study, creative peaceful labor.
At least one tangerine, but for everyone.
It couldn't be otherwise.
Even in a city dying of hunger and cold.
Even in the hell created by the demon-possessed city - the cradle of the revolution.
To every little Leningrader.
We know five names of those who carried tangerines for the Christmas trees of besieged Leningrad: Maxim Emelyanovich Tverdokhleb, Semyon Ilyich Mateka, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lyapkalo, Vasily Ivanovich Serdyuk and Alexander Pavlovich Boykin.
Zhdanov personally gave the order for this flight - outside the schedule, skipping forward vegetable oil and ammunition.
Elbow-deep bloody Bolsheviks.
This is how one must understand the picture of historical truth.
To repeat the well-known... Sometimes it is necessary.
The column was shelled - and severely.
German aces are the world's main fighters with tangerines.
In Maxim Tverdokhleb's lorry, 49 holes were counted, and the rest had no less.
In severe frost with broken windows, they brought the cars to the city, and their fingers (how can we not believe the eyewitnesses - hold it in the cold and even a stick, tightly grabbing it with your hands for at least half an hour) unclenched with great difficulty, literally tearing off from broken rudders.
They say that many tangerines were with bullet holes.
They say that the smallest of the guests of the Leningrad Christmas trees said: “Look, it has grown with a hole!”
There were also musicians and artists.
Unknown for the most part, not folk, not just heroes.
Many of them did not survive that first blockade - and the most terrible - winter.
They sang, as it should be, called Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden, as it should be, gave gifts - handed them solemnly - to small exhausted children with faces transparent from hunger, frail teenagers, more similar in weight and handshake strength to small children ...
You know these stories, you can't not know them.
Like a Christmas tree in Leningrad apartments, they painted on the wallpaper, stuffed carnations into the wall, hung toys on them.
How often last year's sweets were in a box with toys (there was this: they hung sweets on the Christmas tree - and not one at a time, in large quantities) - and what happiness it was.
How those sweets found were divided equally among everyone and solemnly eaten at midnight ...
And in some boxes there were no last year's sweets.
And in some houses there were no those apartments where boxes with Christmas tree decorations once lay on the mezzanines.
The city was bombed.
The houses in it collapsed, turning into piles of rubble, almost every day ...
No Leningrad.
Why?
Why is there no city of Leningrad on the map of Russia?
I can not understand.
There is no Stalingrad either.
Do I need to tell you what trees were there?
And how many houses are left there with apartments and boxes of New Year's toys on the mezzanine? ..
I'm not talking about eternal tears.
I'm talking about memory.
If we cannot realize the degree of courage and will of those generations - both adults and children - maybe we will remember this at least once a year, in December?
At least once a year.
But everyone.
Remember the postcard of the upcoming 1945?
The most famous.
With such words that trembling through the body until now - and every time?
Can't you remember?
Sweeping enemies out of the way
Will lead to victory
Great coming
People's glory year!
Dedicated to all who fought and lived...
To all musicians and artists of children's New Year's holidays - cruel and holy war years.
To all children of the Soviet Union.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.