I HAVE just been to buy my yolka or fir tree, an essential part of the Russian New Year celebrations. Many poor Russians begrudge paying 25,000 roubles (£3) per metre of branch and go out into the forest to cut down a tree.
But that is, strictly speaking, illegal. I thought it might look bad if the correspondent of The Irish Times was fined for poaching greenery, so I bought my tree at Moscow's Novoslobodskaya Market from a jolly woman who measured it with a tape measure.
Although Russia is covered with fir trees - you can travel across Siberia for days on the train and see nothing but evergreen - the tradition of putting presents under the tree was actually imported from Germany. The Orthodox Church initially disapproved of this foul foreign influence, but the Communists thought to stick a red star on top of the fir tree and made it Russia's very own.
The presents are delivered by Ded Moroz or Father Frost, the Russian Santa Claus. Instead of a red nosed reindeer, he relies on a female helper called Snegurochka or the Snow Maiden. Her job is to restrain Father Frost from drinking too much vodka and falling down dead drunk on his rounds, although often it turns out that the Snow Maiden has to be carried home too.
Of course, only children and the naive believe in Father Frost and the Snow Maiden. We all know that Mum and Dad really bought the presents, after struggling through the crowds at Detsky Mir (Children's World), the big toy shop which glitters incongruously next to the forbidding Lubyanka, the secret police headquarters in Moscow.
Time was when Russian children had to be satisfied with simple Soviet made toys but now nothing less than radio controlled jeeps and Barbie dolls will do. At 500,000 roubles (£62) a jeep costs about one third of the average wage. "My wife and I will be living on dry bread for the rest of the year to pay for this," laughed Anatoly, a doting father shopping on Saturday.
Russians live in flats, so there is no nonsense about Father Frost coming down the chimney. The presents just miraculously appear under the fir tree in the evening of December 31st, when families gather to drink out the old year with vodka. Just before midnight, President Yeltsin appears on television with a short, benevolent speech. Then after the Kremlin bells have sounded, the New Year is drunk in with champagne.
In millions of Russian homes this festive season, children and adults will be opening their presents to find they have received just what they always wanted a little furry bull. For 1997 is the Year of the Bull according to the Chinese calendar, which Russians have incorporated into their celebration along with the German fir tree.
Beijing does not object to the theft of its tradition, as most of the soft toy bulls on sale in Moscow have been imported from China, where economic reform has gone before political change and not the other way round as here.
Superstitious Russians believe that the nature of the year's animal determines the fate of humans for the next 12 months. 1996 was the Year of the Rat, a capricious creature which causes chaos, and indeed in the last 12 months Russia has got into a mess, with unpaid taxes, wages and pensions, as politicians were first busy with the presidential elections and then the winner, Mr Yeltsin, fell ill and needed heart surgery.
By contrast, the bull is a beast that loves order politicians are promising that 1997 will be the year when things are put right in Russia. Mr Yeltsin has already announced a crackdown on tax dodgers, including distillers who have not been paying duty on alcohol. The communists and nationalists say Mr Yeltsin is still in fact ill and should resign to allow them to bring in bullish law and order policies of their own.
The Chinese New Year has not arrived yet of course but Russians do not care and date the start of the Year of the Bull from January 1st. To make sure the bull is in a good mood, they will include some food it likes in their festive meal so pass the straw please.
After the New Year dinner (Russian salad and more alcohol) Russians like to go for long nighttime walks in the snow. Tourists will flock to Red Square but the locals prefer to visit their friends for impromptu parties.
Evening dresses are all very well but in the depths of the Russian winter, jumpers and woollen leggings are better. This December, after unusually mild weather, temperatures have plunged as low as minus 30 Celsius, reminding Muscovites of an especially cold winter in 1979 when on New Year's night the hospitals were full of young women. The frost was so hard that their nylon tights froze to their legs and they needed medical assistance to remove them.