The exhibition "Christmas Fairy-tale" will be held in the halls of the Palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, at the “Kolomenskoye” Museum Reserve. More than 500 items of 1930-1960s from private collections are presented there: Christmas decorations made of glass, wool, cardboard, carnival costumes, masks, New Year's posters, photographs of children's Christmas holidays, New Year celebrations in the families, New Year festivities.

Visitors will see the unique toys – the heroes of Pushkin`s fairy-tales "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish", "The Golden Cockerel", Chukovsky`s fairy-tales "Dr. Aibolit" (Russian “Dr. Doolittle”), Gianni Rodari`s "Cipollino", Russian folk tales, as well as figures of children, clowns, animals, fish and birds.

The exhibition was prepared in the cooperation with "Soyuzmultfilm". It will be open until 24 of February.

In the Soviet Union the celebration of Christmas and New Year was forbidden in the mid-1920s, and therefore the decoration of the Christmas tree was also prohibited. The "comeback" of the Christmas tree happened in the second half of 1930: on December 28, 1935 the article of Pavel Postyshev was published in the "Pravda" newspaper saying:  "Let's organize a good New Year`s celebration for the children". So the era of Christmas decorations began in 1936. In January 1937 the country`s main Christmas tree 15 meters high was put in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, and it was decorated with 10 thousand toys.