The museum presents a drawing made by an unknown artist in December 1841 in Novgorod, where Alexander Herzen was serving another exile. The drawing depicts the first Christmas tree in the life of Herzen’s son Sasha (diminutive of Alexander). The drawing has a simple composition: on the left is a Christmas tree without decorations standing on the table. On the right is a woman in a dark dress holding a child reaching out to the tree — most likely it is Sasha’s nanny. The reverse side features an inscription made by Natalya Alexandrovna Herzen, Alexander’s mother, “1841. December 26. Novgorod.”

The holiday was overshadowed by tragic events: the Herzen family welcomed a daughter in late December and named her Natalya after the mother, but the girl lived only for a few days. Natalya Alexandrovna described it in a letter to her friend from Moscow Tatyana Astrakova,

This drawing is one of the first depictions of a Christmas tree in Russian art, and the quoted letter by Natalya Herzen is one of the first descriptions of an arrangement of a Christmas tree in a Russian house. The tradition of decorating a Christmas tree for New Year’s holidays was adopted from Germany in the late 1830s and early 1840s. At first, this “German custom” was followed in the homes of the Saint Petersburg nobility. But it would soon come into fashion, and by the end of the 1840s, a Christmas tree had already become part of the interior on Christmas in the Russian capital. The literary critic Ivan Ivanovich Panayev ironized on this occasion, “In Saint Petersburg, everyone is obsessed with Christmas trees. From a shabby room of an official to a magnificent salon, everywhere in Saint Petersburg has burning, glittering, shining, and shimmering trees on Christmas evenings. It is now impossible to do without a Christmas tree. And is it even a holiday if there is no Christmas tree?”