According to fans of mathematical paradoxes, the year 2025 is the first perfect square since 1936
By Kirill Privalov
I will never forget the following scene: a woman of indeterminate age was sitting on a bench of an underground railway platform waiting for the next train (I hate the word “elderly” when assessing a lady’s age!). And she was eating chocolates, which were big, bulging out and mouth-watering…
She took each of them from the packet and bit at it. Then she carefully and intently peered inside the chocolate, trying to understand what was there. She probably wanted to see what filling it had: fruit, mint or praline. Then she would carefully put the chocolate back into the packet!
When the train arrived, the stranger – surprisingly – did not even move, did not stand up and continued her gastronomic examination, which, apparently, was thrilling to her…
I don’t remember in which city it was – in Moscow, Paris or maybe St Petersburg. But the scene seemed mysterious and captivating to me, and I could hardly keep from approaching the stranger and wonder what she hoped to find inside her chocolates. Was it really a promised surprise? A coin or a miniature ceramic figurine that “brings happiness” (as they do in France when they prepare the traditional “galette des rois” in January, so loved by children not only for the delicious marzipan filling, but above all for the symbolic “fava bean” inside, which gives a child the right to put a paper golden crown on his head)?
New Year’s Eve “a la Russe”
Likewise, we peer inside every new coming year with impatience, and sometimes with fear. What’s “inside” it? Fortunately, 2025 is not a leap year. I have disliked leap years for a long time. Judging from my personal experience, they are always fraught with unpleasant surprises. I am not alone in this judgement. It is enough just to look at the statistics. It’s a terrible fact, but in all countries more people die in leap years than in usual years. Is it due to one additional February day? No, banal mathematics is unable to explain this phenomenon – we can hardly do without mysticism here.
In China, where the fear of leap years might have come from, they say that the number four, which is consonant with the word “death”, has a very strong negative impact on people. And in Russia, where 29 February according to the old calendar is St Cassian’s feast (St John Cassian the Roman), there is an ancient saying: “Wherever Cassian looks, everything withers.”
And indeed, in leap years plenty of tragic incidents occur – social conflicts, natural disasters, negative political events… True, all this happens in other years too, but in leap years such events are the most destructive.
Let’s look back at history. To name just a few: in 1268 over 60,000 people died from a natural calamity in Sicily; in 1400 a plague swept through medieval Europe, killing more than a third of the population; in 1572 10,000 people were butchered during St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; in 1896 a tsunami in Japan claimed the lives of 27,000; in 1912 the Titanic sank; the Tunguska asteroid exploded in 1908; the years 1976 and 1988 were marked by the most terrible earthquakes, the number of victims of which reached tens of thousands.…
This is probably enough… Let’s talk about the Christmas tree. Today you cannot imagine the Russian New Year without it. In France (I first noticed it a long time ago) Christmas trees are often thrown away almost immediately after the Catholic Christmas, or at best right after 1 January. I used to walk past rubbish bins placed on the edge of the pavements in the early morning on the first days of the New Year in Paris, with numerous Christmas trees in or beside them. Dead, forgotten, thrown away, no longer needed by anyone (neither by children nor by adults), sometimes even with once–life-affirming festive tinsel, which their «owners» had been too lazy to remove…
To me it looks like a blatant betrayal. It’s unfaithfulness to a wonderful holiday, from which cynical people have got what they wanted: plenty of champagne, a delicious and sumptuous meal, presents, fireworks and all that. “We couldn’t care less about the rest!”
Since childhood, the naive holidays of the turn of the year: two Christmases (the Catholic and Orthodox ones) and two New Years (the actual New Year and the “Old New Year”) – have been like a part of my biography, my being, my modus vivendi. And the Christmas tree here is a beloved and precious object.
I cannot put up a «killed» Christmas tree at home: the ancient Germans used to flay those who stripped the bark off trees. (What sacrilege it is when a Christmas tree is put up on the floor into a cross! Albeit wooden and clumsily put together, but still a cross)! Besides, it hurts a tree when it is sawn, chopped and felled. This is why for many years now I’ve been buying Christmas trees exclusively in tubs. They stand in my house, decorated with cotton wool instead of snow, till the end of January, and then a solemn transplanting of the tree into the ground is organised. Note: a living tree! I did it in France, and now I’ve been doing it in Russia. Some of you may argue: «This is impossible! In Russia the ground gets frozen in winter.» This is partly true. However, it is enough to hollow out the upper ice layer of the soil (only a few centimeters) and you can dig a hole large enough to plant a Christmas tree. After all, in the Moscow region the ground freezes just at the surface, and winters have not been blessing us with January frosts lately. Once I started counting how many Christmas trees I had saved from death in this way, and I lost count. May they continue to grow and be pleasing to the eye!…
However, the other day an old friend of mine, who graduated from an agricultural academy a long time ago, came to see me in my country cottage and began to scrutinize my somewhat wild planting. And he remarked in passing, «You really love silver firs!..» It has turned out that the trees that I had always thought to be firs are actually silver firs. They were once sold to me as «Christmas firs”. Well, never mind! Silver fir, like fir, is a beautiful evergreen coniferous tree. It means that it is an attribute of our New Year and “Old New Year” alike. And that’s great!
«Square» calendar
And now about one more surprise. According to fans of mathematical paradoxes, the year 2025 is the first perfect square since 1936, because 45 x 45 = 2025 and 44 x 44 = 1936. The expression “perfect square year” is not generally accepted, but there is a strong opinion that it is correct to talk about the year this way. According to this concept, every year has four sides, almost equal: the upper one is winter, the lower one is summer, the right one is spring and the left one is autumn. Indeed, it appears that the year is not at all round, as most people believe, and the expression “all year round” is nothing but a figure of speech. True, the seasons smoothly follow each other, forming a closed annual cycle. But, given the increasingly frequent weather and climate disasters in our time (not to mention politics!), you begin to understand that years have not been so smooth and round lately, becoming ever more “prickly” and “square”.
However, fortunately, for Russians every year begins with an unusual holiday, which at least temporarily reconciles us with the unpleasant reality. This fiesta is called the “Old New Year”. I love this holiday with a long history, which I never tire of explaining to foreigners. Russia under the tsars lived according to the Julian calendar, an ambiguous allusion to Julius Caesar and his love for ancient Egyptian astronomy. Europe stuck to the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. There was a difference of thirteen days between the calendars, which caused problems in international economic and political affairs. When the Bolsheviks came to power on 14 February 1918, Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar.
And why not? Thanks to this Russians have another wonderful holiday – the New Year according to the old calendar, or the “Old New Year”, celebrated on the night of 13-14 January. By the way, it is celebrated not only in Russia, but also in some countries of the former USSR, as well as in Montenegro, Serbia, Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Japan.
As we know, there are no coincidences: the “Old New Year” concurs with the feast of St Basil the Great, which was loved in pre-revolutionary Russia. It was nicknamed the “generous evening” because people were generous in everything and, most importantly, in laying the table. Traditionally, housewives cooked wheat porridge with meat or lard, baked pancakes and cakes, and in the evening they had dinner together with their neighbours. There was a belief that the one who cooked the most delicious dish would be lucky for the whole year ahead. Pork dishes were especially appreciated: St Basil was regarded as the patron-saint of pig farmers. (The name Basil, or Vasily, comes from the Greek adjective “βασίλειος”, meaning “royal”; for many centuries in Russia “Vasily” was the second most popular given name after Ivan).
And how can I not remember the mentioned woman with chocolates in the underground who stuck in my memory! It seems to me that she was looking for a surprise in them. Maybe she was just celebrating the “Old New Year”. After all, on the night of 13 January Russians had a tradition of making dumplings with a surprise. We would cook them with the whole family for the whole day and gave space to our imagination. Anything could be a surprise. It was believed that luck was guaranteed for the whole year ahead to the one who got it. Not to mention that every surprise had its own theme: for example, a bean found in a dumpling foretold a mew addition to one’s family; a grain of black pepper- a thrilling experience; a dumpling with sugar — a “sweet life”; a coin guaranteed wealth and prosperity; dill or some other herb would bring good health; but a thread in a dumpling (how unpleasant it is!) would take you on a journey soon. The most important thing was not to forget to warn the guests to eat carefully or their teeth would be at risk from some surprise fillings.
“As you celebrate New Year’s Eve, so you will spend it.” This saying is also about celebrating the Old New Year. There was also a belief that if someone from a large family entered your house first, you would live in satiety and prosperity the whole year.
There were also superstitions related to weather. If the south wind blew on the night of the Old New Year, the whole year would be warm and kind. The west wind promised an abundance of milk and fish; the clear starry sky – plentiful fruit and berries in summer and autumn.
And a few words on what not to do on Old New Year’s Eve. Firstly, you should not borrow money, or you will spend a year now paying off debts, now waiting for others to repay them. Remember: first you take someone else’s, then you give your own. Secondly, it is undesirable to celebrate the Old New Year exclusively in a female company — then you risk spending the whole year alone. You also should not clean the house on this day, since you can accidentally take luck out into the street with rubbish from your room.
Borschok in Montmartre
I explained all this to Mireille Mathieu on the night of the Old New Year (which in France is sometimes referred to as the “Russian New Year”) in Montmartre.
And it started like this… Mireille, whom I had known for many years, rang me up and told me that the famous restaurateur Edouard Carlier was going to celebrate the Old New Year. In order to add some Russian flavour to the celebration Carlier wanted to invite Mireille Mathieu (as she performed a lot in Moscow and could sing in Russian) and her Russian Parisian friends — that is, my wife and me. A tempting offer!
Carlier was a cult figure of Montmartre. In 1974 he turned the baker’s situated in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, on the left along a steep street rising to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, into one of the most prestigious restaurants in Paris. And he named it “Beauvilliers” – in honour of Antoine Beauvilliers, the chef of the Count of Provence, the future king Louis XVIII of France. By the way, it is Beauvilliers who is credited with inventing the very term “restaurant”.
Ah, what joy it is — waiting for a celebration! My wife and I began to wonder what the coming day would bring us. Honestly, we had never seen French people celebrate the “Russian New Year” before. And our expectations were fulfilled and even exceeded.
At Beauvilliers everything was furnished “a la Russe”. At the entrance guests were greeted by a huge lanky fellow in a costume of an archer from the era of Ivan the Terrible or the vestments of an Orthodox monk. The garcons (waiters) were dressed up as Cossacks from Hollywood pictures. Carlier himself “reigned” supreme and single-handedly at the restaurant, with a muostache painted with burnt cork, in a papakha (Caucasian fur hat) and for some reason in a Malorossian kosovorotka (a Little Russian shirt with the collar fastening on the side).
Mireille did not come alone, but with her younger sister Monique “Matite”, with whom she lives in a cosy house in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, and with her, as she introduced him, “makeup artist”. Legends abounded about Olivier, the famous makeup artist of the stars (I recognised him straight away). They say that he (who often appears at various soirees next to Mireille) is her “secret husband”. Indeed relations between them were touching, but they did not indicate their special closeness, as it seemed to me that evening.
The table was a noble, genuine Russian New Year’s table with pickles, a salad vaguely reminiscent of our Russian salad, borscht (for some reason called “borschok” — it’s probably easier for French people to pronounce it this way), plenty of grainy black caviar (!) in a large transparent vase, herring with potatoes, beef stroganoff… And the main adornment was a pot–bellied bottle of vodka, frozen in an ice bucket, with flowers and some climbing plants frozen in it.
“To our insides!” Carlier offered a classic toast of Russian immigrants in France, and a marvellous fiesta began.
Amazingly enough, Mireille took it: she knocked back shots of ice-cold vodka one after another and slices with caviar. The others did not lag behind.
“The Roma are coming!” Mathieu announced to us as a New Year’s gift.
Indeed, from somewhere at the back the musicians of the ensemble, announced in the programme as “Romany”, appeared. But I didn’t see any musicians from a Romany camp there. All the faces were familiar: these were my friends and virtuoso guitarists Serge Camps and Petya Prokudin-Gorsky… And the soloist was the Armenian Lilya, who had long been imitating Esmeralda in all Parisian Russian taverns.
“Two guitars behind the wall strummed plaintively…” Lilya set off with a song. Mireille froze, listening to the “Roma Lilya”’s strong voice. And she couldn’t help but join in instantly in Russian: “Eh, once, one more time!..” My good friend Seryozha Camps, half-Russian and half-French, winked at me roguishly, and I joined in too: “…Many, many more times!” One of Carlier’s garcons started dancing squatting. “Eh, once, one more time!..” the whole hall got excited. And the centre of everyone’s New Year’s attention was her -the incomparable and inimitable Mireille Mathieu. After Two Guitars she performed in Russian Black Eyes and Evenings Around Moscow to Romany guitars of Russian Parisians… The audience, who had not expected such an impromptu concert, was delighted. Mireille, amazing, signed her autographs left and right, refusing no one.
All in all, the “Russian New Year” was a success! After midnight, we called Mathieu’s mother in Avignon, her birthplace. Then my wife suggested: “The year of the tiger has begun. Why don’t we play the game ‘The tiger is coming!’?” After we had explained the rules of this glorious alcoholic game to the French, everyone approved the idea unanimously. One: we drink to the dregs; two: the alarm sounds, “The tiger is coming!”; Three: we crawl under the table all together. And thus three times. Both Mathieu sisters passed this test, but the makeup artist Olivier remained under the table after the third vodka session without eating anything.
It was dawning outside the window. The candles in the candelabra that Carlier had placed on the tables had burned down. We went home. Mireille and her sister went in a limousine driven by Mathieu’s personal chauffeur to Neuilly. Olivier, who was picked up and safely put into a taxi by the “Cossacks”, travelled separately. Even before that he had begun to snore. Such things happen, especially after “a la Russe” festivities. Olivier should have helped himself to more Russian salad.
Believe me, you can celebrate the “Russian New Year” worthily in Paris too.
