When the Bolshevik government switched Russia from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in early 1918, thirteen days vanished overnight. What had been New Year's Day under the old system now fell on January 14, and rather than let the celebration disappear, generations of Russians, Ukrainians, and other former Soviet citizens simply kept marking it, giving the world a second, unofficial New Year's Eve.
The Julian calendar had drifted so far out of sync with the seasons by the 20th century that Russia, still using it while the rest of Europe had long since switched, found itself thirteen days behind the Gregorian West. Lenin's government corrected this on February 14, 1918 (by the new count), decreeing that January 31, 1918 would be followed directly by February 14.
But calendars are stubborn things in the popular imagination. The date that used to be January 1 under the Julian system now landed on January 14 Gregorian, and Russians kept toasting it as 'Old New Year' (Stary Novy God), often with more warmth and less pressure than the official holiday on January 1. It became an excuse for a second round of parties, a quiet act of cultural continuity amid revolutionary upheaval.
The tradition persists today not just in Russia but in Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, and other Orthodox-influenced countries, some of which still use the Julian calendar for religious observances like Christmas. It's a peculiar living fossil: a holiday whose entire reason for existing is a bureaucratic date change made over a century ago.
Key people: Vladimir Lenin