Shimmering in a white dress fringed with white fur and wearing white patent leather boots, “Snow Maiden” strode into a crowd of young children gathered in the downstairs room of the Synagogue for the Arts on White Street. Their excitement was palpable.

“Do you want presents?” she said to them in Russian, her voice booming through a megaphone.

“Da!” they yelled back in unison.

“Do you want to see Grandfather Frost?”

“Da!” They said in unison.

“Grandfather Frost lives deep in Northern Ustag, in the woods of Russia,” she told them. “That’s where you must write him.”

Snow Maiden and Grandfather Frost came to Tribeca last month in honor of the Russian New Year, which, following the Julian calendar, is celebrated in mid-January.

Sponsored by Bright Minds Center, a bilingual nursery school housed in the synagogue, the event brought together many families whose children attend the school or study Russian at the Jewish Community Project in Tribeca.

(The fir tree and Grandfather Frost  were briefly banned under the early Communists because they were seen as religious symbols.)  

Elizabeth Tretter, a Financial District resident who emigrated from Russia at 17, watched her two daughters, Stella, 5, and Lola, 2, who were entranced by Snow Maiden and Grandfather Frost as they performed a lively polka-like step.

“It’s amazing,” Tretter said, a little teary-eyed. “It’s so close to when I was growing up. I feel so nostalgic!”

Julie and Michael Waldorf, of Battery Park City, came with their two sons, 4- and 2-years old, who were swaying to the recorded sounds of traditional Russian children’s songs.

“The more holidays they get presents,” Waldorf noted, speaking a truth for children, everywhere, “the happier they are.”