The study of language is also the study of culture. Language shapes, and informs the cultural identity of a people at the most very basic level. When we choose to take on the task of learning another person’s language the cultural education is not far behind. Since making those first cautious contacts in April of 2008 I was almost immediately exposed to people who were in fact not the scary, single minded, residents of the Evil Empire I was warned about in my youth but a warm, generous people who were almost immediately ready to teach me the language but also eager to start my “cultural education” as well. In retrospect this was really their only choice as my written Russian was a disaster and my spoken Russian was nonexistent.
And so they shared what they had, which speaks to the generosity of the Russian character: music, food, history, and literature. By the end of May I had been introduced to the amazing world of Russian rock and pop music, salted cucumbers, literature beyond Pushkin, and perhaps more than I needed to know about the rituals of Soviet cosmonauts. By the end of the summer I had made my first two failed attempts at making Uzbek pilaf, learned about what was involved in becoming a member of the Communist party, Lermontov and Gogol, and by that time had fallen in love with the music of the band DDT. In the fall I was starting to feel confident in speaking and writing but still struggling. I was meeting, writing to and speaking with a growing and diverse group of native speakers. Then as the winter and holiday season approached, they began to mess with me.
Ok ONE guy began to mess with me.
It was early December, and I was working online while my family was organizing the Christmas decorations. I love the holidays but my genetic instinct leans toward an argument over the broken lights and missing shepherd, so I let my husband who is much calmer over such tragedies manage this part of the work for Christmas. I would enjoy the soft glow later. For now I was chatting on Skype with Sasha in eastern Ukraine.
“What are you doing today?”
“Today we are decorating for Christmas.”
“WOW so early.” (The big holiday for Russians is New Years, while the religious holiday follows on January 6th.)
“Remember, for us Christmas is December 25th.”
“How do you get your fir?”
“??”
“You know since the fall of the Soviet Union we have had a real problem, with unemployed bears.”
“Bears?”
“Yes you know the trained bears in the famous Russian circus.”
“The ones that drive cars and do other tricks?” I had remembered a story Mila, my Russian teacher had told me about once witnessing a bear that had escaped from a circus in Moscow. The bear had hijacked a car and driven quite far down one of the main boulevards in Moscow before stopping for a red light and being tranquilized by the police.
“Yes, those exact bears. Now they have no jobs, and because they are so highly trained they cannot be released into the forest.”
“Interesting, so what do they do?”
“They have a new job, here in Ukraine they will deliver your fir tree.”
“NO WAY!!! REALLY??”
“Of course, we call the man who has the bear and he comes over to our place and the bear brings us our fir.”
“That is amazing!”
“That’s not all, for a little extra money the bear will place decorations on the fir.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Not usually. But we have to remain quiet and still, no pictures. You don’t want to startle the bear, even one trained this well.”
“So you don’t have any pictures?”
“No”
“Do they have a website?”
“No, these are humble worker bears. They work, they are not celebrities.”
“hmmmm…so you don’t have a picture of a bear. Do they do this in Moscow?”
“You can ask your Moscow friends but I don’t think so.”
“Tashkent?”
“There are no bears in Tashkent, it’s too hot. Bears like a real Russian winter.”
“hmmm so only in Ukraine?”
“Only eastern Ukraine. You remember that here we are very proud of being Russian. These bears are our heritage.”
“Hmmmm”
“You don’t have animals to deliver firs in America?”
“No.”
“That is very strange, it seems some rich American should have thought of this great idea!”
“Hmmmm”
Then there was a long pause in the conversation. In the Skype window his wife, my friend Irina came online.
“Has Sasha been telling you about the bears?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t believe him do you?”
Sadly, I did. I really liked the idea of these “retired” circus bears delivering trees. I was disappointed that the image of a bear wearing a hat and vest bringing fir trees to the citizens of Ukraine. Part of the cultural education is also collecting good stories, this one along with my knowledge of cosmonaut rituals, are my favorites. And now every year around the holidays, I tell my eleventh grade students this story. Very convincingly I might add. I told it this past Friday and now I am just waiting to see how long it takes them to figure it out.
Oh and I will be staying home on January 14th, March 8th, April 12th and June 12th. It is after all, part of my cultural education.
