Representation of the lexical concept "Christmas tree" in children’s fiction of the first half of the 20th century.

The article is relevant due to the need to integrate diachronic and textual criticism methods of studying the concept taking into account its various interpretations such as logical, literary, cultural, mental, and lexical. The aim of the study consists in examining the explication of naming and connotative features of the lexical concept "Christmas tree" in works depicting the ritual of the children’s festival New Year. The main research method is conceptual square analysis (according to V. V. Kolesov) in terms of historical lexicology and the cultural significance of the word. In this context, four forms of meaning are taken into account, namely the internal form, the image, the concept, and the symbol, as well as the actual and potential lexical meanings of the word associated with them. The findings indicate that in the pre-war and post-war Soviet periods, the symbolic meaning of ‘a little spruce is a children’s festival’ remained consistent from early to later texts. However, it was accompanied by various associations of cultural significance, for instance, ‘Lenin’, ‘light’, ‘love for the Motherland’. The meaning ‘Lenin’ appeared in the 1925 edition and was retained in numerous reprints of the precedent text "Lenin and Children". The meanings ‘childhood’ and ‘light’ reflected the cultural continuity of the Soviet concept "Christmas tree". Several contexts reveal the figurative component of the concept in the form of the canonical Christmas tree image which included such characteristics as ‘deep in the forest’, ‘hard to get’, ‘tall’, ‘lush’, ‘straight’, ‘decorated’, ‘bright’, ‘dancing around it’. In the Soviet cultural model, the denotative image of the Christmas tree was the central element of the ritual of unity among the working class. The research results demonstrate the sacra-lisation of the contexts of children’s New Year celebrations and require further clarification of the timing and conditions of the shift in the cultural significance from Christmas to New Year.

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