"Symbol of life turned upside down"

The fashion for attaching a Christmas tree to the ceiling came from a mental hospital

In the Nizhny Novgorod city psychoneurological hospital No. 1, the New Year tree is traditionally installed on the ceiling. The most common forest beauty is attached with its base to the ceiling, and the top of its head rests on the floor. The author of the idea, the famous psychotherapist Jan Goland, believes that the New Year tree “growing” from the ceiling is a characteristic symbol of Russian “upside down” life.

In 1960, Jan Goland graduated from the Gorky Medical Institute and was sent to work in his specialty on Sakhalin. As he himself claims, Sakhalin doctors always celebrated the New Year with an inverted Christmas tree. Allegedly, in a similar way in the Soviet years, domestic doctors showed a kind of “fig in their pocket” to the official authorities. The authorities, apparently, knew nothing about this and perceived what was happening as a cute joke from overplayed medical workers. Returning to Gorky Goland in 1964, he was appointed head of the day hospital of the city psychoneurological hospital. And he immediately transferred the Sakhalin experience to Nizhny Novgorod soil. And for 43 years now, the New Year tree in the main city psychiatric hospital has been hanging upside down.

The hospital's chief physician, Jan Goland, finds a lot of excuses for the “shifter.” Firstly, no one will drop a Christmas tree hanging from the ceiling. As a result, fire safety is at the proper level. And such a tree crumbles less. Children of hospital staff and patients are delighted. “At the sight of an overturned Christmas tree, our patients awaken their sense of humor,” Dr. Goland told Vremya Novostei. “And how can he not wake up if this is, in fact, a ready-made caricature of our reality?” (According to Dr. Goland, for thirty years he raised the issue in all instances about the construction of a new building for a psychoneurological hospital. Patients in the hospital were “on three floors”: two tiers of beds plus a mattress under the bed - for those who did not have enough space. Only in the early nineties did the authorities of Nizhny Novgorod build a new building for the hospital.)

Today, New Year trees that are mounted on the ceiling are not uncommon. They can be found, for example, at industrial enterprises in Nizhny Novgorod. Dr. Goland jokingly suggests that, apparently, the current leaders of these organizations were once his patients. True, no one shows any “figures in their pocket” in this way anymore. Simply installing a Christmas tree on the ceiling is becoming fashionable today.

By the way, they claim that Peter the Great, who introduced the new calendar to Russia, recommended that Russians hang Christmas trees on the ceiling. It is unknown what considerations the reformer was guided by. However, for some reason, the subjects of the Russian state did not listen to his recommendations. Perhaps, if Peter had been more persistent in these wishes, everyone who attaches the New Year tree to the floor would now look like eccentrics.

Sergey ANTONOV, Nizhny Novgorod