It is a night for men to go carousing, but they get lost in the unexpected darkness and there is a perilous snowstorm. Vakula is his prey because he painted an icon that shows the devil being vanquished and it hangs in the local church… Taking the form of a grotesque fairy tale, this macabre novella tells the story of the night the devil steals the moon so that under cover of darkness he can avenge himself on the town blacksmith, Vakula. Gogol’s Night Before Christmas is a tale of lust, jealousy, corruption and revenge, and though the good guy wins, he may regret his heart’s desire in time.
It comes from Gogol’s first collection of Ukrainian stories ‘Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka’, which he published in 1831. But refine your search with the name of the great Russian satirist Gogol, and what you get is a fairy tale not suitable for children at all. Their covers feature a superfluity of jolly men in red suits, reindeer, tinsel and ‘loot’ under Christmas trees. Nikolai Gogol (Source: Wikipedia Commons)Ī search for the title ‘The Night Before Christmas’ brings up 880 results, and it’s a safe bet to say that 879 of them are suitable for children.
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