David Burghardt

August ‘tis not the season for Christmas, but you wouldn’t guess that in Moscow right now. At first I thought I had really lost it, I’d finally gone mad…

Over the last two weeks in the Moscow subway system while going up or down the escalators, I’ve been hearing music. Not just any music, but traditional American Christmas music. The first time I heard Santa Clause is Coming to Town, I snickered and thought someone in the public transportation system was just playing a prank. A couple days later while riding the escalator, I heard Jingle Bells. On both of these occasions I was at the subway station where I work, so I thought it was a “local” thing going on, something like a very strange flash mob put on by the employees.

But today, I was exiting another station not far from the Kremlin and what did I hear? Yes, Santa was still coming to town!

That got me to thinking…maybe this was intentionally done to make people think of winter while it's extremely hot in Moscow (around 90 degrees Fahrenheit), kind of like a psychological attack to make you think that once you step outside there will be a blanket of snow on the ground.

But that hypothesis won’t work because Russians don’t know these songs (with the exception of Jingle Bells which very few know, and if they did, they sure wouldn’t be singing it now). Secondly, Russians celebrate Christmas differently and in January, not in December, let alone in August, or with American Christmas songs. They don’t have “Christmas songs.” They have winter-themed songs, but no Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer anywhere or Silent Nights.

The psychological trick to “cool the soul” in hot weather doesn’t hold either, unless of course they are trying to save the foreigners who are traveling on the subway, mainly the Americans, which I highly doubt. And this is mainly because it gives us a chuckle upon hearing that music on a hot summer day.

I’m assuming that someone in the public subway system just liked the “snazzy tune” and decided to program it into the PA system. I think we should do some sort of barter with New York’s subway and let them blast away some “Oi, Moroz, Moroz!” which is a traditional Russian winter (not Christmas) song.