Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
And some pretty cards with Cнегурочка & Дед мороз

Ё-моё! As St. Lucy might have said: "Oh, my eyes!!"



Since наша Ханна has already crossed the lines of good taste and moral decency by posting a disco-blinking animated .gif, I might as well add this little анекдот про Деда Мороза и Снегурочку, which was told to me by a Ukrainian emigre several years ago:

Дед мороз пьяный, с сигаретой в зубах, выходит к деткам, и тащит за косу Снегурочку, всю избитую, в кровоподтеках, в разодранном платье. Детки тут же начинают плакать.

-Дедушка мороз, ей же больно!! -- кричат детки.

-Я что, садист по вашему ? -- спрашивает дедушка, раскручивает над головой Снегурочку за косу, и со всего размаха бьет ее об пол -- Она же дохлая!!!

I have successfully told this joke to friends who aren't students of Russian, using a loose translation "in the American idiom":

Santa Claus comes out to his Santa chair in the shopping mall where the kiddies are waiting -- he's drunk, with a cigarette in his teeth. Behind him, he's dragging the beautiful Snowflake Elf by her long hair, and she's bruised and beaten, bloodstained, with her dress all torn up. Upon seeing this, the kids burst into tears.

"Santa Claus, you're hurting her!" scream the children.

"What, you think I'm some kind of sadist?" retorts the jolly old saint, whirling the Snowflake Elf over his head by her braids, and smacking her against the floor with all his might. "It can't hurt her, she's already deader than roadkill*!"

* "Roadkill" = падаль животного на шоссе. You could also translate Она же дохлая!!! as "She's a carcass; she's a stiff; she has croaked; she's at room temperature", etc. The point is that дохлый ("dead") can be used politely only when speaking about animals, but it sounds very crude and disrespectful to say it about a person.

P.S. This only is my second-favorite анекдот про Деда Мороза. But I might save my favorite one (set in Africa, with the punchline "Кто в этом году плохо кушал...") for later.