ather Frost didn’t drop presents off for Russian children on Dec. 25. And he won’t on Orthodox Christmas (Jan. 7), either. Rather, Ded Moroz and his lovely snow maiden assistant, Snegurochka, are attached to New Year’s Eve, which in Russia is the new year and the secular bits of Christmas like trees and presents all rolled into one.To understand how this came to be, we can’t just fly to modern-day Moscow. We begin, rather, over a thousand years ago.