concept
Obligatory New Year's Visits
obligatory visits
also: обязательные визиты, визиты
The Imperial Russian social custom requiring officials and gentlefolk to make a round of formal calls on superiors, relatives, and acquaintances on New Year's Day, often signing a greeting sheet in lieu of a full visit; satirized here as a day-long ordeal of enforced conviviality that leaves its practitioners collapsing in the street.
Reading notes
- New Year's Great Martyrs §1 obligatory New Year's visits
In Imperial Russian society, New Year's Day required a round of formal calls -- juniors on superiors, relatives on relatives, acquaintances on acquaintances -- to offer holiday greetings in person. St. Petersburg's streets would fill with sledges and pedestrians racing between addresses to complete the round before the day (and often the visiting hours) ran out. The custom is the story's entire engine: its comic premise is what happens when a modest official tries to honor it in full.
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