This eccentric and fantastical fairy tale takes place near the village of Dikanka on the night before Christmas. Amid carol singing, drunken revelry, and amorous hijinks, the blacksmith Vakula persuades the Devil to fly him to Sankt-Petersburg, where he hopes to obtain a pair of the Empress's slippers which might win him Oksana's love. Based on a "Christmas Eve", first story in the second volume of the collection "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka" by Nikolai Gogol.