Ded Moroz, Snegurochka, and the Circles of Memory
The ballroom at Impress was packed—parents standing shoulder to shoulder, children darting between them in sparkly dresses and miniature suits. At the center of the room, Ded Moroz and Snegurochka, larger than life, laughed and led the kids in games and songs. Their voices carried through the room like echoes from another time.
It was impossible not to smile as I watched my children run toward them, singing along in Russian as if they’d always known the words. The air felt full of joy—light, uncomplicated, real. Yet behind my camera, I couldn’t shake a feeling more layered, more complex: the echoes of another memory, far colder, from a different place.
In Moscow, where I grew up, every winter meant the same ritual. My mother or grandfather would spend weeks tracking down a ticket to the Ded Moroz party at the Kremlin Palace, something that could not simply be bought but had to be earned, gifted, or pulled from the strings of bureaucratic privilege. And every year, their efforts ended with me, a small child, stepping through the grand doors of the Kremlin for a show that I was told was magical.
The strange thing is, I barely remember the concerts themselves. I can’t recall the songs or the performances that supposedly lit up the great stage of the Kremlin Palace. But I remember, with startling clarity, what came afterward.
When the show ended, all the children were handed a box of candies shaped like the Kremlin tower. The boxes were red, their texture smooth under my fingers, and as we carried them, we formed a line—a circle, really—just outside the palace, near the great squares of the Annunciation and Assumption Cathedrals. This was the moment I loved most, the only moment I longed for every year.
Our parents weren’t allowed inside, so they waited in the cold, watching as we marched out in those winding circles. Among the crowd of adults, I always found my grandmother. She was easy to spot, not just because I knew her so well, but because she was so small, so unmistakably her. She was tiny, Asian, her face a mixture of worry and joy as she scanned the children, jumping and waving to catch my attention.
I never thought about the cold then—hers or mine. I never thought about the hours she spent standing there, waiting, just to make sure she’d see me the moment I emerged. What I thought about, what I can still feel in my chest now, was the pure happiness of her face when she saw me, the way she reached for my hand and pulled me close, as though she’d been holding her breath all that time.
Back at the Impress Ballroom, I watched Ded Moroz and Snegurochka say their final goodbyes, their laughter ringing out as the children scrambled to hug them one last time. The parents lingered, some snapping photos, others simply watching.
The moment reminded me of that circle from my childhood—not the grandeur of the Kremlin, but the warmth of the waiting. And for a fleeting second, as I watched my own children run toward me, their faces flushed and bright, I wished I could step out into the cold and see my grandmother there again, waving her gloved hand above the crowd, smiling as though nothing else in the world mattered but this.
Now, years later, I realize that the memories I treasure most have never been about the spectacle or the grandness of the traditions we carry. They’ve always been about the circles—the people who wait, who wave, who make those fleeting moments feel infinite.
