{"id":1787102,"date":"2022-12-26T06:30:16","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T11:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1787102"},"modified":"2022-12-26T10:49:25","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T15:49:25","slug":"rebekah-koffler-i-lived-under-soviet-communism-and-it-taught-me-to-love-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/rebekah-koffler-i-lived-under-soviet-communism-and-it-taught-me-to-love-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebekah Koffler: I Lived Under Soviet Communism and It Taught Me to Love Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Frebekah-koffler-i-lived-under-soviet-communism-and-it-taught-me-to-love-christmas%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1787102&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! <\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/world\/world-regions\/russia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Growing up in Soviet Russia,<\/a> I didn\u2019t know what Christmas was, let alone celebrate it. Every winter we did, however, celebrate the biggest holiday of the year \u2013 New Year\u2019s. All across the country, between the end of December and mid-January, major festivities were held at schools, kindergartens, universities, and places of work, with singing, dancing, and lavish decorations. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">For a couple of weeks each year, you got transported from an otherwise harsh and dreary Soviet reality into the magic of holiday cheer, with fireworks, marching bands, streetlights and firecrackers. The centerpiece of the holiday was the New Year\u2019s Pine Tree (Yolka) that decorated every home and workplace. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>My sister and I relished the moment when we helped our mother decorate with ornaments a freshly cut Yolka that our father brought home. And we couldn\u2019t wait to go to mom\u2019s workplace to dance a khorovod around the lit-up tree and get a translucent sack filled with candy and one tangerine \u2013 a big rarity back then, especially in winter \u2013 from a bushy eye-browed and long-bearded Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter Snowgirl. It was a fairytale that became real, albeit just for a few short days.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/woke-london-museum-change-name-christmas-exhibit-winter-festival\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>&#8216;WOKE&#8217; LONDON MUSEUM TO CHANGE NAME OF CHRISTMAS EXHIBIT TO &#8216;WINTER FESTIVAL&#8217;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What I didn\u2019t realize until my early twenties was that the Soviet government did indeed feed us a fairytale. In my fourth year of college, I was one of very few students sent on an exchange program to London. That December, to my astonishment, I learned that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/special\/occasions\/christmas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">British celebrated something called Christmas,<\/a> with a Yolka called a Christmas Tree and a Grandfather Frost called Santa Claus, but without the charming granddaughter. Instead, he had a sweetly innocent reindeer, Rudolph. On December 24\u00a0and 25, the Brits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Growing up in Soviet Russia, I didn\u2019t know what Christmas was, let alone celebrate it. Every winter we did, however, celebrate the biggest holiday of the year \u2013 New Year\u2019s. All across the country, between the end of December and mid-January, major festivities were held at schools, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1787105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[6962,10847,5458,6922,5607,11872,11873,7150,7415,3819,10575,10621,4729],"class_list":["post-1787102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-the","tag-and","tag-bongino","tag-christmas","tag-communism","tag-koffler","tag-lived","tag-love","tag-rebekah","tag-report","tag-soviet","tag-taught","tag-under"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1787105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}