#Ukrainian Christmas

[vintage-ukraine]

Carolers in a hospital in Kyiv, 1918

[yuliia-ozen]

A wonderful painting by Liudmyla Tafiychuk (Людмила Тафійчук) was turned into this amazing gif. Merry Christmas, dear friends! Let it give hope to us, with its Star shining all along this dark and long way.

Христос народився! Славімо Його!

[collapsethevillain]

- Is it true that your wife dresses up as an imp and walks around, scaring people?

- That’s true.

[kazhanko-art]

So with the recent switch in Ukraine for Christmas to be exclusively on Dec 25th, I’m wondering how the diaspora will be responding. In Canada, the Orthodox churches have all joined the switch, with some accommodation, but the thing is that the Jan 7th date has for while left being a purely religious thing. “Ukrainian Christmas” is celebrated by Catholics and non religious diaspora members as a holiday much more about identity and heritage, especially as a means of preserving an identity away from the anglocentric one in Canada. So on the one hand, officially Ukrainian Canadians are joining Ukrainians in moving just to Dec 25th, but on the other hand, we have developed a rather separate holiday from what the Jan 7th date meant to Ukrainians, so I suspect many will continue to celebrate it in that capacity. It’s a weird situation, so I guess we’ll see what happens

[artcorvid]

Merry Christmas! I make this really cool drawing of a Ukrainian Christmas Vertep.

Tell me if you want to hear more about the Vertep tradition in Ukraine. It`s really cool folk practice and i could tell some more about it :D

[noblogname765]

Merry Christmas my dear people! 🤍🤍🤍

[mhalachai]

Ukrainian Christmas Eve by William Kurelek, 1973

Веселого Різдва! (Merry Christmas in Ukrainian)

On Ukrainian Christmas Eve, which this year is Jan. 6, families gather to eat once the first star is spotted in the sky (to remember the star than shone on Jesus’ birth). The meal, know as the Holy Supper, features 12 dishes (to remember the 12 apostles), starting with kutia, boiled wheat grains mixed with poppy seeds and honey. At this meal, the dishes don’t traditionally have meat, eggs or milk (that’s for Christmas Day, after church). More on Holy Supper dishes.

Personal note: My mother’s family is Ukrainian-Canadian, and kutia is the first food I can remember eating - the slight bitterness of the poppy seeds, the deep richness of prairie honey, and the caviar pop of the wheat grains with the optional walnut as a treat. 

My great-grandmother, who came to Canada to escape the Holodomor, refused to her dying day to believe in God but went hardcore on Orthodox Christmas and Easter as a giant fuck-you to Stalin. We’re alive, she said. We’re here. We eat.

Веселого Різдва.

Image from Canadian Paintings on twitter

[driver270]

Holiday Music

Merry Ukrainian Christmas to those who celebrate.

[nolinork]

[donfadrique]

I have a tradition of cooking duck with apples for Christmas. In addition to this, there was coffee with whiskey and something else.

And there was Santa Claus too, and a Californian one 🧡✨

[vintage-ukraine]

Carolers by Alla Honcharuk, 1986

[yuliia-ozen]

This is Nikita Titov's artwork. God bless all defenders of Ukraine who provide our opportunity to celebrate in the warm home under the protected sky.

[valya-dudycz-lupescu]

New Year's Wish

Tonight is when my family celebrates Ukrainian Christmas Eve, Sviat Vechir. It is on this holiday more than any other that I think about my family, my ancestors, and the country my grandparents were forced to leave.

I learned from them, and from others of their generation, that there are many shades of resilience: humor, creativity, hospitality, adaptability, conservation, anger, silence. We see this in the stories shared from Ukraine, as well as the stories from other places around this country and the planet where people are fighting for their lives. 

I keep asking myself, How do I begin to formulate a wish for the new year with such a backdrop? 

I’ve sat with these words and feelings for a week now, writing and erasing and writing again. I keep coming back to this Leonard Cohen lyric:

"There is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in." ~Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

We are living in communities — global, national, and familial — that are fractured and wounded. Trying to figure out how to heal those wounds is something many of us will spend our lifetimes working toward.

In talking with friends and family over the past few weeks, so many people are feeling a deep longing for connection — with those we’ve lost or lost touch with, with those we have not yet met — as well as spiritual and existential longing for a kinder, more peaceful and more just world.

There is more to this reflection in my blog post, but here is my imperfect but sincere wish for the New Year:

In this new year, when we reach out our hands, may we find other hands there to safely take hold of, to lift us up, to bring us close. And when we are able, and we see hands reaching out in earnest, may we find the strength to take hold of them.

May the obstacles that stand in the way of connection begin to be eradicated and may bridges take their place.

May we see people as they need to be seen, and may each of us find our way to the communities that will see us and love us and help us to heal ourselves, others, and this planet.

Love and blessings in the new year.

[horpyna]

the song is called "Щедрик(Shchedryk)" which comes from the word "щедрий", "generous" in ukrainian. It is a song from the canlendar cycle. It is not about Jesus's birth because it's a song for a completely different purpose. Ukrainians would walk from home to home and sing this songs called "щедрівки (shchedryvkas)" to wish luck, wealth, good harvests and prosperity to the owners. This process (or a ritual if you will) is called "щедрування(shchedruvannya)".

The original song very much goes about a swallow, that wishes more money and goods to the owners of the household, pointing out the fine lambs that were born in their flock.

The song is now associated with Christmas across the world, but shchdryvkas (thus Shchedryk) are usually sung for New Year, in the evening of the December 31 (January 12 old style). This evening is called "Щедрий вечір(Shchedryi vechir)" – literally translated as "the Generouse evening", or Silvester. It's festive and theatrical.

Shchedruvannya live looks like this:

For Christmas, there is a different kind of the calendar cycle songs – "колядки(kolyadkas)". Those are explicitly about Jesus's birth, Mother Mary, Three Kings and The Beacon. The name itself originetes from the pagan fest "Коляда(Kolyada)", which celebrated the birth of the God of the New Sun. The Goddess Kolyada would give birth to the New Sun, after the Old Sun ends it's cycle on the day of Winter Solstice. Kolyadkas would essentially praise the Goddess and her newborn son. After the Christianisation, kolyadkas morphed to praise mother Mary and Jesus Christ, but the name remained unchanged.

Kolyadkas are also sung for households by local youth, "колядники(the kolyadnyks)". The kolyadnyks would go from home to home and sing kolyadkas in exchange for sweets, backed goods, money or other items. The whole process is called "колядування (kolyaduvannya)". They are dressed festivly, carrying a gloving beacon and small verteps (nativity scene).

Kolyadkas are sung in the evening of the December 24 (January 6 old style). This evening is called "Святвечір(Svyatvechir)" or "Святий вечір (Svyatyi vechir)", which is translated literally as the Saint Evening, or Christmas Eve.

(Though they ask for goods during "щедрування(shchedruvannya)" as well. Sometimes this request are directly in the lyrics or the shchedryvkas. Ukrainians have this joke "Turn off the lights, the kolyadnyks/shchedruvalnyks are coming!")

Here is how it looks nowadays.

Shchedryk itself is a folk sond, arranged by the ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych. Thus the music of the Carol of the Bells is also his. It is an important piece of ukrainian art, as Leontovych himself was murdered in cold blood by the undercover NKVD agent in the wave of repressions against the ukrainian artistic intelligentsia. He pretended to be a passerby who needed a shelter, and Leontovych let him in to stay overnight. NKVD agent shot him in his sleep. All his compositions were destroyed. The fact that Shchedryk survived is a miracle. People began to acknowledge Leontovych as the original author of the music only in the recent years.

In the US Shchedryk was adapted as an English Christmas carol, "Carol of the Bells", by american composer Peter J. Wilhousky, in 1936. But earlier the original Shchedryk was performed abroad by Alexander Koshetz's Ukrainian National Chorus.

Here is Schchedryk's literal translation to English:

And here are the kolyadkas, unfortunately in ukrainian only:

Only good thing about Christmas time is I get to hear carol of the bells all the time but the bad part is I have to act normal like that song doesn’t go hard as fuck

[dandelioninajungle]

The tree is up!

She is decorated!

Messily and gorgeously!

[justacynicalromantic]

The Oleksandr Koshytsia Choir, 1922. It was them who introduced “Shchedryk” to America.

Its haunting melody was later adapted into the popular “Carol of the Bells” in English, making it a Christmas classic worldwide.