A dozen bankers and their girlfriends will roam the city streets on New Year's night, fancy-dressed as Father Frost and Snow Maiden, with gifts for all who would come their way. They will make it a point to distribute more expensive things, writes Finansovye Izvestia.
"Rich people have had enough of standard New Year celebrations at the opulent table with caviar, pineapples and grouse, all that to the sound of the Kremlin chimes. They want to turn into benevolent and generous good wizards at least once a year," Sergei Knyazev, who invented the charitable action, sentimentally says. He is proprietor of a celebration and PR producer center, named after himself.
It took the Father Frosts a month to get through public entertainers' classes. They were learning rhymes and ditties by heart, and training in folk game leading. They are ready with several comic programs. They will choose for their endeavor several modest neighborhoods to show their worth in the yards and drop into random apartments. The Frost-Snow Maiden pair who visits the most households will win the competition.
To go down to the grassroots is all the fashion with the middle class representatives now, says Mr. Knyazev. Almost all recently preferred to see New Year in at a posh restaurant or night club. Now, a majority will go to the woods to gather round a real fir tree, with a bonfire, shashlyki and pancakes, in the company of clowns and entertainers dressed up as elves and dwarves. Companies charge ten to 25 thousand dollars to arrange the night's merriment, complete with a Santa Claus or Father Frost to come down on the merrymakers by glider, or parachute from a helicopter.
