of the Southern Urals were called Santa Claus. "Santa Claus" can be translated from Latin as "sacred, closed place" from "sanctus" – "sacred, inviolable, inviolable", "clausum" – "closed locked place, lock, bolt." And Santa Claus (Father Frost) rides a sleigh and lives at the North Pole. The sleigh is older than the wheeled cart; they were known to the peoples of not only northern but also southern countries. Most likely, sleighs were born in the polar regions and served as the main means of transportation in winter. In off-road areas in the Far North, and in some places in Siberia, sleighs often replaced wheeled vehicles in the summer. In rural areas of those countries where the winter is snowy, sleighs retain their importance; among the peoples of the Far North they still serve as the main means of transportation. Father Frost with the Snow Maiden in a sleigh drawn by four reindeer, who brings gifts to children, was obviously a prototype of the northern peoples, where there is frost, taiga and deer, and who came in sleighs to Europe with their goods. Then this image was transformed into the image of St. Nicholas. Ancient Indo-Europeans in winter on sleighs drawn by reindeer could travel long distances through the snow, exchanging their goods (“to-var” from the name of the ancient Var), where they “cooked” metal products – the region of the Southern Urals, and could travel to the North Pole region along Ural mountains.

The ancient Indian legends – the Vedas – mention the ancient architecture of the ancient Indo-Europeans. People of the “Vedic” era lived in small round or oval (egg-shaped) villages, consisting of buildings with hemispherical and conical roofs, the village was surrounded by a fence and observation towers, two wide streets intersecting at right angles divided the village into four parts and ended with four gates. This description fully corresponds to most of the fortresses of the archaeological culture of Santashty-Arkaim, which currently numbers 29 archaeologically proven ancient settlement cities in the Southern Urals.

Linguistic evidence shows that in ancient times alphabets were written from right to left. And the word “Meru” written backwards will give “Urem”, which resembles the word “Ural”. In the Devanagari script (“used in the heavenly city”), in which such common Indian languages as Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, etc. are written, which goes back to the Brahmi script, words are written from left to right, connecting letters along the upper horizontal, vowels after consonants are designated by special signs, the sound “a” is not indicated at all” (Tikhomirov A.E., Meru – Ural Mountains? “LitRes”, Moscow, 2023, p. 6).

The Snow Maiden is a unique attribute of the image of Father Frost. None of its younger or foreign brethren have such lovely escorts. The image of the Snow Maiden is a symbol of frozen waters. This girl, dressed only in white clothes, reflects popular ideas about youth and moral beauty. No other color is allowed in traditional symbolism. Her headdress is an eight-rayed crown embroidered with silver and pearls. The modern costume of the Snow Maiden most often corresponds to the historical description. Violations of the color scheme are extremely rare and, as a rule, are justified by the inability to make the “correct” suit. In the repertoire of storytellers, the tale of the Snow Maiden, known only in Russian folklore, is usually combined with other plots. One of the versions of the fairy tale, in which the Snow Maiden melts from the sun's rays, was creatively developed by A.N. Ostrovsky in the fairy tale play of the same name, which formed the basis of the opera by N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov "The Snow Maiden".

1916: “On April 8, the 1st meeting of the Committee to Combat German Domination was held in Petrograd. This dominance was understood as the influence of the German language and German customs on the Russian people. In particular, decorating Christmas trees for the New Year was prohibited; it was believed that this was a German custom introduced by Peter I. (In fact, the worship of evergreen and long-lived trees and plants, herbs – for example, oaks, heather, spruce (fir trees), fir trees , palm trees, baobabs, etc. is due to the fact that ancient people could not explain why these plants and trees are ever green and (or) live for a very long time, hence the ancient custom of decorating these trees and plants, which became widespread among the Germans in northern Europe decorations of fir trees, as the most common trees and shrubs, which have survived to this day as New Year trees). In December 1915, by decree of Nicholas II, the liquidation of German colonies in the Volga region, southern Ukraine and the Caucasus was scheduled for April 1917 through the forced resettlement of German colonists to Siberia. Bans have been introduced on the use of the German language in public places, on the dissemination of information about the army, in a number of provinces the spread of rumors and false information discrediting the government is prohibited" (Tikhomirov A.E., Hard Time of Russia: 1916-1919. Chronicle of events. "Ridero" , Ekaterinburg, 2019, p. 3).

References

Great Soviet Encyclopedia, edited by B. A. Vvedensky, Moscow, 1953, vol. 19

Calendar customs and rituals of the peoples of East Asia. New Year, editors-in-chief: R. Sh. Dzharylgasinova, M. V. Kryukov, Moscow, Main editorial office of oriental literature of the Nauka publishing house, 1985

Tikhomirov A.E., “History of the New Year and chronology in Rus'”, published in “Lokomotiv”, December 2005 No. 21, the newspaper of the labor collective of the Orenburg Locomotive Repair Plant, also in the “Collection of Articles”. Orenburg, 2014

Tikhomirov A.E., Hard Times of Russia: 1916-1919. Chronicle of events. "Ridero", Ekaterinburg, 2019

Tikhomirov A.E., Meru – Ural Mountains? "LitRes", Moscow, 2023

Tikhomirov A.E., Tikhomirova G.M., Migrations of Indo-Europeans. Indians are Indo-Europeans. "Ridero", Ekaterinburg, 2018