An introduction to the winter holidays in Russia

This post was originally made by E-chan. on Duolingo Russian forum.

Happy holidays to everybody! Many of you are already in the middle of the holiday season. In Russia the holidays haven't started yet. For those of you who are interested to know how it goes in Russia here is a little review.

Vocabulary introduction
Here are some useful words and phrases.
Рождество - Christmas
Новый год - New Year
Канун нового года - New Year's Eve
Сочельник - Christmas Eve
С Новым годом! - Happy New Year!
С наступающим! - [Congratulations] on the oncoming [holidays]! - a very common phrase that people tell each other for a few days before the New Year night
Провожать старый год - to give the Old Year a send-off. Before welcoming the New Year we should say good-bye to the one that is about to end. Usually it means that people recollect the good things that happened this year, what they achieved and wish that the next year will be even better - and drink champagne.
Дед Мороз - Grandfather Frost, a Slavic cousin of Santa Claus
Снегурочка - Snow maiden, Ded Moroz's granddaughter and helper
Новогодняя ёлка - New Year tree
"Новогодняя ёлка" - a traditional New Year mass party for children which includes games, contests, theatrical performances, feasts, sweet presents. Children often wear costumes.
Гирлянда - Garland
Мишура - Tinsel
Рождественская или новогодняя ярмарка - A Christmas or New Year fair
Салют - Fireworks

Christmas
There are two things that you should know about Christmas in Russia. First, it's celebrated on January 7. The main religion in Russia is Orthodoxy (Православие). The Orthodox church still lives by the Julian calendar. It's not a very correct calendar since it has a bit too many leap years (високосный год). Nowadays it's 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. That's why the Orthodox Christmas is on January 7, not December 25. December 25 is a regular workday.

The second thing, it's not a major national holiday like it is in the West. It's a religious holiday. New Year is the main holiday of the year. Christmas celebration mostly consists in a grand Christmas mass. Religious people go to church. Also on this day people can visit relatives and friends or send them "Merry Christmas" messages. Normally there are either nominal presents or no presents at all since there already were lots of presents just a few days before.

New Year
New Year is the main holiday of the year. It's celebrated everywhere and by everyone. With family, with friends, with colleagues. With parties and presents and feasts. Children (and sometimes adults) have costume parties. After midnight everybody set off fireworks.

Food
The most traditional food for the New Year celebration includes:
Шампанское - Champagne
Оливье - a salad, usually made with diced boiled potatoes, carrots, brined dill pickles (or cucumber), green peas, eggs, onions, diced boiled chicken (or some other meat), dressed with mayonnaise.
Селедка под шубой - "herring under a fur coat", is a layered salad composed of diced pickled herring covered with layers of grated boiled vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beetroots), chopped onions, and mayonnaise.
Мандарины - Tangerines
Икра - Red caviar

Practical note
Officially we have 5 days-off for New Year plus one for Christmas. Add to this weekends and it will result in about 8 or 9 days of national vacation. On January 1 hardly anyone works. During the following days most institutions don't work except for entertainments, transport and some emergency services. Many people travel to other cities or abroad. This results in a sharp price increase for planes, trains and hotels.

Old New Year
There is a rather peculiar phenomenon called "the Old New Year" - Старый Новый год. People celebrate it on the night between January 13 and 14. What is it about and why does it have such a strange name? It's basically just a New Year, only celebrated by the old style (Julian) calendar. Remember why Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on January 7? If you use the same Julian calendar the New Year night would fall on January 13-14 in Gregorian calendar. Since we adopted the Gregorian calendar not so long ago (the beginning of the XX century) some remnants of it are still alive. Ok, very few people actually live by the old style calendar. But there are a lot of people who just enjoy one more opportunity to celebrate something. It's not an official holiday, but in the evening there are parties and there are also a lot of fireworks at night.

Some cartoons to watch
Ну, погоди! (Just You Wait!)
A New Year-related episode from an animated series which depicts the comical adventures of a mischievous yet artistic hooligan Wolf (Волк), trying to catch — and presumably eat Hare (Заяц). There are almost no words.
смотреть

Снегурочка (The snowmaiden)
A 65-minutes animated feature film, it's is based on the Slavic-pagan play of the same name by Aleksandr Ostrovsky (itself largely based on traditional folk tales). Music is from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden. Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden), the daughter of beauty the Spring and Ded Moroz, yearns for the companionship of mortal humans. She grows to like the Slavic god-shepherd named Lel, but her heart is unable to know love. Her mother takes pity and gives her this ability, but as soon as she falls in love, her heart warms up and she melts.
смотреть (no subs)

Щелкунчик (The Nutcracker)
Based partly on Pyotr Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker and E.T.A. Hoffmann's novelette The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. There are no words but very beautiful music.
смотреть

Двенадцать месяцев (The Twelve Months)
A capricious teenage queen wants a whole basket of fresh snowdrops as a New Year present. The person who brings it is promised an equal basket filled with gold. An orphan Girl's Stepmother and Stepsister, obsessed with the thought of gold and not particularly caring that snowdrop will not bloom till spring, send the Girl into the woods to look for flowers. In the wood she accidentally comes across a bonfire lit by twelve people – who turn out to be the Twelve Months themselves. When they find out about her impossible task they deside to help her.
cartoon (no subs), movie: часть 1, часть 2 (no subs)

Падал прошлогодний снег (Last Year's Snow Was Falling)
A very popular clay-animated film. The protagonist is a lazy, ignorant but tricky man. He is also tongue-tied – unable to pronounce some digits and letters. He likes beer and always gets into ridiculous situations. Fortunately he has a strict and authoritative wife. The story begins when his wife sends him to bring a New Year tree from the forest. But the forest in the winter is a magic place full of surprising events and transformations. Entangled in the miracles, having lost and found his own image more than once, the man goes back home with empty hands.
смотреть (no subs)

Маша и медведь (Masha and the Bear)
A very popular modern animated television series. The show focuses on the adventures of a little girl named Masha and a fatherly bear that always keeps her from disasters. These episodes are related to the New Year.
смотреть (no subs)

Movies
Ирония судьбы, или С лёгким паром! (The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!)
A romantic comedy-melodrama which became one of the New Year symbols. The key subplot is the drab uniformity of Brezhnev-era public architecture. On the New Year's Eve Zhenya Lukashin meets with his friends in banya. They get too drunk there and later by mistake they send Zhenya on the plane to Leningrad (St. Petersburg) instead of the other guy. Upon arrival Zhenya is still too drunk to realise that he's not in Moscow anymore. He stumbles into a taxi and gives the driver his address. It turns out that in Leningrad there is a street with the same name, with a building at his address which looks exactly like Zhenya's. The key fits in the door of the apartment with the same number. Inside, even the furniture is nearly identical to that of Zhenya's apartment. Zhenya is too drunk to notice any minor differences, and goes to sleep. Soon the real tenant, Nadya Shevelyova, arrives home to find a strange man sleeping in her bed.
часть 1 (English and Russian subs), часть 2 (Russian subs)

Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки (The Night Before Christmas)
This fun and magical story happened (or not happened) in one Ukrainian village about 250 years ago on the night before Christmas. Amid carol singing, drunken revelry, and amorous hijinks, the blacksmith Vakula persuades the Devil to fly him to Sankt-Petersburg, where he hopes to obtain a pair of the Empress's heels which might win him Oksana's love.
смотреть (no subs)

Морозко (Jack Frost)
A Cinderella-like story about a humble hard-working girl whose stepmother decides to get rid of her and one cold winter day she orders her meek husband (the girl's father) to abandon her in the middle of the forest. There, she comes across Morozko (Father Frost) bringing winter to the woods. Touched by her kindness and unselfishness, he rescues her from freezing to death and brings her to his home. Based on a Russian folk tale.
смотреть (English subs)

Карнавальная ночь (Carnival Night)
A musical comedy. It is New Year's Eve and the employees of a House of culture are ready with their annual New Year's entertainment program. It includes a lot of dancing and singing, jazz band performance and even magic tricks. However at the last moment a new director has been appointed. He disapproves of the scheduled entertainment. To him, holiday fun has a different meaning. He imagines speakers reading annual reports to show the club's progress over the year, and, perhaps, a bit of serious music. Obviously, no one wants to change the program a few hours before the show, much less to replace it with something so boring!
смотреть (English subs)

Чародеи (Charodei = Enchanters)
Romantic fantasy musical film written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Ivan Puhov is in love with Alyona who works as a witch in a magic-research institution. The couple are about to get married when Alyona's jealous and scheming co-worker, Sataneev, tricks Alyona's boss into putting a spell on Alyona. The spell makes Alyona undergo a severe personality change, become unable to control her actions, and forget about Ivan. Ivan and Alyona's friends must figure out a way to break the curse while simultaneously protecting the institution's latest research development, a magic wand.
часть 1, часть 2 (Russian subs)