IF, like Scrooge, you believe that Christmas is humbug, then one of the best places to spend the festive season is in Moscow. Here you are safe from jingle bells, and other dreadful jollity. For in Russia, December 25th is just an ordinary working day.
Misanthrop should be careful to leave Moscow by January, however, for the Russians are far from being a miserable people. Eventually they do get round to Christmas, which they celebrate through the night of January 6th to 7th according to the Orthodox calendar. And before that, of course, they have their big secular holiday, New Year.
Fun loving westerners based in Moscow, therefore, try to go home for Christmas and return to Russia around December 31st. But you cannot always have the best of both worlds. This year I am in Russia for the Christmas of the Catholic and Protestant churches. Unlike Scrooge, I am open to the possibility of having a good time.
Western Christmas in Russia, is not, of course, quite as bleak as it used to be in the Communist era, thanks to the arrival of the free market. Russian shop owners, who have learnt much from the Finns, Germans and Irish who pioneered the first supermarkets here, know there is now a big foreign community in Moscow and cater to their needs. Some New Russians also think it is chic to celebrate western Christmas. For the feast, you can buy turkey and fancy cakes as easily as you can in the west.
What a contrast from Christmas 1985, my first in the Russian capital. Then foreign embassies used to take pity on their citizens and give them food parcels containing meat and sausage to save them queuing for cabbage along with the poor locals. That service has long since disappeared as Moscow is no longer considered "a hardship posting".
With our embassy rations, we would try to make the best of it, getting together for Christmas dinners as if we were at home. But the old Soviet Foreign Ministry serving what was then an atheist state, would always spoil Christmas Day for western correspondents, apparently with deliberate malice.
Without fail, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, just as the journalists were settling down to their turkey and plum pudding, the ministry would summon them to a press conference. The reporters could never risk ignoring it just in case some important announcement about Kremlin politics was to be made. But always the official spokesman droned on about some dreary topic such as the achievement of the Soviet Union at the United Nations before pointedly wishing us all a very merry Christmas.
This year, Western correspondents who have stayed in Moscow for Christmas will be watching how President Yell sin gets on in the Kremlin after weeks off work because of his heart operation. Not very festive. But, of course, there is now no desire on the part of the authorities to make life uncomfortable for the foreign press. It is just that Mr Yeltsin is keen to immerse himself in the affairs of his country again after and he has found highly frustrating.
The best way to survive western Christmas in Moscow is to avoid thinking with too much longing of all the merry parties going on back home and to enjoy what Russia itself has to offer in late December. One thing is snow. It was very late this year as I mentioned last week, but now it has come with a vengeance. No need to listen to Bing Crosby dreaming of a white christmas just go out into the woods around Moscow, a winter wonderland where the snow lies thigh high.
Another very Russian treat is the ballet. On December 25th, the Bolshoi will open its new production of Swan Lake. The production promises to provoke much controversy, as the new artistic director, Vladimir Vasilyev, who is revamping the theatre's Soviet era repertoire, has taken the bold decision to drop the evil black swan on the grounds that it was a later addition, not something which Tchaikovsky originally envisaged. Audiences who love to hate the baddy may be disappointed.
But my favourite activity on Christmas Day in Russia is shopping. Here the shops are all open on December 25th and you can get a perverse delight in buying gifts for friends who would have gone without presents if you had left it so late in the west.
Time is running out, however. On December 31st, the shops will close here too and Russia will begin its long drunken festive season. Children will be wild with excitement waiting for the arrival of Father Frost and his sidekick, the Snow Maiden. They are a curious couple more about them next week.