Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

A glance over my Christmas shoulder

8 December 2025 – Christmas past: roundup of Xmas and New Year posts

Rolling back the years to revisit comments and observations on Christmases past, looking back particularly on those coronavirus specials, no matter how grim we may feel about the world today and the game of blind man’s bluff it keeps on playing, as trust in the future wanes, almost universally, it’s enough to make you sing, “These are the good old days.”

Christmas past: a roundup of Xmas and New Year posts

👉Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize
Published: 10 January 2023
As the Baltic resorts of the Kaliningrad region prove ever more popular with each passing year, why not do something outrageously unconventional and visit the same in the winter months? I am not suggesting you strip off and get down on the beach, although there are some that will and do, but at least with a hat and scarf on, you can enjoy what in England would be routinely and euphemistically described as the ‘bracing winter weather’. A time of unparalleled excellence to pay a visit to Zelenogradsk is in the lead-up to, or just after, the New Year celebrations. At this time of the year, the seaside town is inhabited with more festive decorations than in the summer crowds of people, and the visual beauty bestowed by these imaginative seasonal displays and the concomitant atmosphere they kindle add an extra sparkle of magic to an already magical destination. Here’s a runback to Zelenogradsk 2023 in all its Christmas and New Year glory.

Christmas in Gdansk Mick Hart & Joss Hart

👉Christmas in Gdansk
Updated: 11 February 2022 | First published: 5 October 2019
This post, which was first published in October 2019, was, even then, retrospective, as it relates to my inaugural trip to Kaliningrad, Russia, in the winter of 2000. We entered Russia via Gdansk and spent Christmas and Boxing Day in Poland. This was Poland pre-EU. Gdansk was a rather different place than it is today.

👉Christmas in the Land of Vax
Published: 3 January 2022
It’s Christmas 2021. The world has experienced two years of what by now has become a suspicious and widely discredited lunacy. In the UK, the socio-political and cultural landscape is ravaged, splintered by misinformation and disinformation (no change there then!), a situation exacerbated by poor executive management, media hype, dissimulation and social media-spread confusion. The country is split, yet again, into two opposing camps, broadly demarcated along an ideological faultline, with pro-vaxing liberals one side and anti-vaxing patriots on the other. Don’t read this post without your mask. Baaaaa ….

Persuading a vaccinated liberal not to come for Christmas

👉How to deal with a vaccinated liberal family member at Christmas
Published 23 December 2021
Coronavirus. The UK media and the dictatorial liberal left have never had it so good. Among other intelligence-bending articles, a self-help guide emerges for liberals presumably agonising over how to react politely, although I’ve never met a polite liberal yet, to recalcitrant, heretic family members who refuse to kowtow obsequiously to vax-or-else hysteria. This post is my flip side to that deliriously daft dilemma.

👉Don’t let that man spoil your vaccinated Christmas!
Published: 22 December 2021
As you can see, to vax, not to vax or to be dragged kicking and screaming by men in white coats and forced to vax were popular topics in their UK day (December 2021). The British government and the British media were yet to exploit Ukraine. Masking and vaxing had become the testing ground for a new hysteria yet to be deployed. It was the country’s political hot potato, destined to be dropped, however, suddenly and cynically, as soon as Ukraine hit the headlines. Immediately, Britons were urged, both to a man and a transvestite, to forget about their masks and change their social media avatars to the colours of their government’s underpants. Or have I got that wrong?

👉Zelenogradsk! Lit up like a Christmas tree
Published: 24 December 2020
Removing my mythical mask and the anti-vaxing section of metal drainpipe I’d fitted over my upper arm, here I take a break from worrying about not worrying about the coronavirus scare, at least not worrying as much as I’m told I ought, and return to the simple, traditional pleasures of Zelenogradsk at Christmas time: its streets bedecked with decorations and also its bars as well.

👉Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past
Published: 23 December 2020
There’s nothing like a national/international crisis, especially at Christmas, to bring out the nostalgia in us. Here’s me, in the midst of coronavirus, harking back to simpler, happier times. The pandemic may now have gone – for the moment – but unless you were born too late and have therefore been placed on a diet of whatever it is they choose to feed you, it is unmistakably evident that Simpler and Happier packed their bags ahead of coronavirus and took refuge in the hinterlands of a perceived less treacherous yesterday, leaving behind a growing conviction that the UK state can no longer be trusted.

👉Will Boris’ Bubble be Pricked this Christmas?
Published: 5 December 2020
What was all this about? Something to do with pricks? When you’ve unravelled it, you tell me.

👉Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas
Published: 17 November 2020
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse’ – as cheesy as it sounds, they’d all been trapped by lockdown.

Image attribution
{Feature image} Kerstnacht (1894) by Theo van Hoytema. https://www.rawpixel.com/image/2734100/free-illustration-image-christmas-vintage

https://www.rawpixel.com/image/2734100/free-illustration-image-christmas-vintage
Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=307586&picture=merry-christmas-happy-new-year

Zelenogradsk ~ streets ahead with imaginative decorations

Published: 10 January 2023 ~ Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize

In the UK, the festive season is well and truly over. Unless you had a better time than most, the last remnants of the New Year’s Eve hangover will have sailed way into the ether, along with the memories you cannot remember and those you wish to forget. But here, in Russia, the festive holidays do not peter out until the morn of the 15^th of January. This is because the Russian Orthodox Church follows the old Julian Calendar and not the Gregorian one, so, although some religious denominations still celebrate Christmas day on the 25^th December and the big festive night for Russians is the same as that for the Scotties, New Year’s Eve, Russians also celebrate Orthodox Christmas on the 7^th January and Orthodox New Year’s Eve on the 14^th January. That’s an awful lot of celebrations in one month, but it does mean that the municipal decorations remain intact until the middle of January.

Zelenogradsk Christmas Decorations Win First Prize

Bearing this in mind, I took a trip to the Baltic seaside resort of Zelenogradsk on the 9^th of January to shiver in front of the sea and say hello to what are without question the most inspiring display of Christmas decorations this side of the Russian border.

I have no idea whether Kaliningrad holds a Best Decorated Christmas Street in the Region competition, but if it did, the main street of Zelenogradsk would win hands down. Words like magical and enchanting easily spring to mind, along with novel, imaginative and even bizarre!

This year I took my camera along with me and, although the snaps that I have taken do not do the panoply near enough justice, they do manage to give an idea of the thought and effort that each shop, café, bar, restaurant, etc put into producing the best expression of Christmas joy. They certainly make my Christmas baubles look pathetic in comparison, even when lit with flashing lights.

Which of the Christmas ensembles along Zelenogradsk High Street would I nominate for first prize? That’s a tough ‘un’. I’ll leave it to you to decide.