For Soviet people, the New Year’s celebration was so enormously significant because people couldn’t just go out and buy all of the ingredients that went into their massive food spreads on December 31.
The ingredients had to be sought out, amassed and jealously guarded throughout the year. The entire year would be like a treasure hunt driven by the vision of that opulent, overflowing New Year’s table. When people sat down to eat on December 31, they wouldn’t just be eating food. They’d be symbolically consuming the reminders of their own greatest achievements throughout the year.
The consumption of the food was accompanied by a prayer-like recitation of these crucial milestones:
“This can of sprats I found back in July, completely by accident. And this chunk of cheese is from all the way back in February. I had to stand in line for 4 hours in the cold to get it!”
The traditional end-of-year list of achievements would transform into “My Greatest Victories in the Art of Food Hunting.”
The overwhelming majority of the food thus treasured obviously had to be canned, smoked, salted or otherwise preserved or it wouldn’t keep. People had to invest a lot of ingenuity into making this food look attractive and stand out from the similar spreads of their acquaintances.
Clarissa's Blog 
Very interesting. I was kind of lucky to completely miss this reality. In my childhood, it already wasn’t like that in my family.
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Would I be right in thinking there were ever gluts as well as shortages of some goods (due to overestimates in production targets), or did this not apply to food? If at all?
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There were guts of products nobody wanted every once in a while, and people were forced to buy them if they wanted the hood stuff. For instance, but 3 cans of sea weed if you want a pound of butter. Don’t want sea weed, no butter for you.
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