September used to be the most festive of all the months for the Pomors – it was the time when all seasonal work in the fields came to an end in Pomorye, the time when fishing boats returned from sea, when the autumn Pomor trading season started. When the Tsar-reformer Peter the Great moved the New Year coming from the 14th of September (the 1st of September in old style) to the 1st of January the Pomors who did not accept the major part of the Tsarist reforms refused to start a year by a new calendar.

The orthodox Pomors have been following this tradition to our days and celebrate the New Year in September. In Russia only the Pomor people have preserved the tradition to celebrate ‘Novoletye’ with a fair, the Margaritinskaya Fair. In 2006 the Pomors celebrated the coming of the year 7515. Thus, when the whole of Russia traditionally celebrate the New Year twice (by the new and old style), the Pomor capital celebrates the New Year three times!

By the way, the Russian Orthodox Church has not accepted the Peter the Great’s calendar reform, and in all the church services the «order of years to come is in the same way».

It is interesting to note that in the 1990s the authorities in Arkhnagelsk tried to revive the Margaritinskaya Fair but in vain. They did not know that the main ‘yarmonka’ of Pomorye cannot be revived without the celebration of the New Year which had been so closely connected with the fair. As a result up to the end of the 20th century Arkhangelsk was the city without its city fair.

The Arkhangelsk native people’s wish to restore the former trading tradition was big that six years ago they restored as the Pomor elders suggested celebrations of the New Year, the autumn holiday of new crop, trade and charity, the ‘heart of the Pomor Fair’. In other words, before the Margaritinskaya Fair was revived, its heart had to be ‘restarted’; otherwise there would be no result.

This is why the main ‘yarmonka’ of Arkhangelsk marked its 5th anniversary in 2006, and the Pomor New Year connected with it from times immemorial celebrated its 6th anniversary.

If someone asks you which town in Russia is a native place of New Year fireworks you can answer with confidence, it is Arkhangelsk! Neither Moscow, nor Saint Petersburg, but the Russian trading town on the Northern Dvina bank gave a start to a Russian tradition to mark the New Year with fireworks. Few people know that it was here, in Arkhangelsk, that Peter the Great first arranged fireworks in 1693 to celebrate the beginning of the New Year!

«Why, someone may argue, there are historical facts: it is well known that Peter the Great visited Arkhangelsk three times, but not in winter, but in summer navigation time! What New Year salutations there could be?»

Another historical fact is: in 1693 the New Year in Russia (‘novoletye’) was celebrated in autumn, on September 14, not in winter. And that was the time when the young Peter came to the Pomorye capital for the first time.

«In Arkhnagelsk Peter celebrated the New Year, which began on the 14th of September (on the 1st in old style), writes the academician Alexander Morozov. There was a solemn church service, guns and smaller rifles salute from the yacht and foreign ships».

It is an interesting fact that Peter the Great arranged the first in Russia New Year fireworks according to foreign tradition during the Margaritinskaya Fair which usually started in Arkhangelsk in September with celebrations of the New Year, «he launched ‘rakitki’ and ‘granadki’ from the English Bridge». The bridge mentioned here was one of the three piers (there were also the Dutch and the Russian Bridges) situated right by the Guests Courts. The English pier was the northernmost and was somewhere near the today’s Pur-Navolok Hotel entrance. It was a wide wooden platform on larch piles running for several metres into the Northern Dvina. It should be noted that the pier had been built by the British long before Arkhangelsk was founded in the middle of the 16th century.

It is easy to imagine an enchanting sight – a figure of young Peter on a high English pier in the dim light of mica lamps and torches who tries to launch a ‘rakitka’, a trendy European rocket for fireworks, presented to him by merchants of Hamburg. At last he succeeds, and accompanied by joyful cries of the crowd ashore and in the boats the first New Year rocket rises into the dark autumn sky. A thunder-like roar follows, sparks and smoke of the first Russian fireworks appear above the white towers of the Guest Courts in Arkhangelsk, above the piers and masts of foreign ships. Not a single town in Russia celebrated the New Year of 1693 the way Arkhangelsk did...

It is possible that Arkhangelsk impressed the young Tsar with its ‘foreign’ appearance so much that Peter decided to celebrate the New Year in the whole of all Russia to a European pattern. It is not mere chance that in six years he ordered to change the existing system of chronology for the European one and to arrange fireworks and salutes everywhere.