Ukrainians like to celebrate. No, Ukrainians love to celebrate! I honestly don’t think that there is another nation out there able to beat us in the ‘who has the most holidays’ contest. Especially in winter. I bet our ancestors really had nothing to do in cold snowy December days and holiday-ing turned out to be a simple logical solution to staying sane.
Don’t see it the wrong way: most of the country does work in winter – banks remain open, shops still sell groceries, and schools attempt at teaching. City life rarely stops. However, if you move a bit away from the main highways and into the real – the rural – Ukraine of villages, home-made bread, Hutsuls (Carpathian mountainous people) and horsecarts, that’s where you will be introduced to the endless Saints’ and other traditional festivals.
But let us leave the challenge of curbing all the celebratory frenzy to the government. Instead, let the world get a unique glimpse into a cultural identity that miraculously survived in the outskirts of modern Europe. From diving into a freezing cold well, to celebrating two New Years – meet five strange Ukrainian holiday traditions that can still be witnessed – and participated in! – at hundreds of Ukrainian villages.
Five Strange Ukrainian Traditions You Will Love1 – Throw your boots behind on St. Catherine’s Day (December 7th)This mostly female holiday is dedicated to the St. Catherine of Alexandria – Christian Saint, who died in the early 4th century at the hands of pagan emperor. Traditionally unmarried girls gather together for so-called ‘vechornytsi’ – special evenings devoted to good food, plenty of girls’ gossips and fun fortune telling customs. If you get lucky and get a chance to join one of those meet ups, don’t be taken aback by all the candles, key chains, and baby dolls.
2 – Misbehave on St. Andrew’s Day (December 13th)Imagine waking up on a beautiful St. Andrew’s crisp cold morning, just to find out that your house fence has disappeared. You take a couple of days to frantically search for it, until you finally give up. Then, two months later, when the spring hits the town, you see how your dearly-missed fence has miraculously re-appeared in your neighbor’s yard, carefully tucked under the heaps of melting snow. Well, you sigh – at least this St. Andrew’s day your horse cart did not show up on the rooftop of your barn, unlike at your unlucky neighbors’ two streets down!
3 – Ditch the Santa Claus for Christmas (January 7th)Christmas is by far Ukrainians’ most favorite holiday. But even for Christmas we manage to bring in so many ancient rituals, that at times the line between the religious and the pagan becomes quite blurry and makes it hard to differentiate what came after the 9th century country-wide baptism, and what – before. First of all, most of Ukrainians belong to the Eastern Orthodox rite of Christianity, and still follow the Julian calendar. It means that all holidays in Ukraine (as well as Serbia, Russia and other Eastern Orthodox countries) lag exactly 13 days behind. Your second Ukrainian Christmas will be in house on January 7th. This leaves you with an amazing opportunity to catch the Christmas holiday twice!
4 – Moo under the Christmas Dinner tableDon’t expect presents or a Christmas tree to that matter. Traditionally the centerpiece of the house is ‘didukh’, a sheaf of wheat that literally means ‘grandfather’s spirit’ and is meant to symbolize the staff of life. Christmas Dinner usually consists of 12 vegan dishes, with kutya – cooked wheat, mixed in poppy seeds, honey and raisins – being the main treat of the holiday. Traditions of house-to-house caroling also hold on, but even the most famous of them are an intricate mix of pagan and Christian. In fact, the world’s famous Carol of the Bells is originally … Ukrainian folk song, which lyrics are in no way related to Christmas.
5 – Dress up for your second New Year celebration in one year (January 14th)We love to celebrate so much, that we’ve even made sure we have two New Year Eves. Yes, the first one follows the Gregorian calendar and falls on January 1st, when we join in with the rest of the world in the craziness of Christmas trees, fireworks and midnight parties. The second one follows the Julian calendar and thus (if you’ve read the previous paragraph, you can easily make some fun calculations) falls on January 14th, leaving us plenty of time to rest after the all-night dancing of the first New Year Eve and… have it all over again!
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