Stars, verteps, and kutia. Julia Lasica explains

Christmas this year in Ukraine won’t be like any other since the time of Stalin. As I write this, my family have been without electricity for a week. The nearest train station has shut down temporarily because of a lack of power. Friends without generators sit without Internet, light, or heating for days. The Russians publicly announced that they want to push Ukraine back into the Stone Ages and it’s clear that they’re trying their very hardest to make that a reality with each wave of missile strikes.

But unfortunately for the Russians, the more they attempt to erase Ukrainian identity, the stronger it is re-established. This week, my social media has been flooded with posts from Ukrainians – those who are lucky enough to have Internet access –  describing our traditions in the run-up to Christmas.

Here is a little summary of the joy and fun that is Ukrainian Christmas. Next year, I’m confident it’ll return in all its light once more.

The first main celebration as Christmas approaches is St Andrew’s Eve on 13 December. With pre-Christian roots, this is an evening of revelling, games, and predictions for the future for young people of marriageable age, the latter being the subject of Ukrainian artist Mykola Pymonenko’s famous painting. Much like Saturnalia, a Roman festival taking place a few days later, chaos would traditionally reign for one night: ploughs would end up on people’s roofs, gates would disappear, and chimneys would be mysteriously sealed up.

Among other rituals, young women would try to carry water from the well in their mouths to bake fortune-telling cookies. Young men would hide along the route, trying to make the girls laugh and lose the game.

Next comes Saint Nicholas Day (known in Ukraine as Svyatyi Mykolai), celebrated on 19 December. Like in other countries such as Germany, Poland and Belgium, Saint Nicholas visits children on this night, placing presents under their pillows if they’ve been good or twigs if they’ve been bad.

The day before, Ukrainian children write letters to Svyatyi Mykolai and place them by the window for the saint to read. This year, one child wrote: “I wanted to ask you to bring me a bicycle but I’m not at home anymore, so you probably won’t be able to find me. That’s why I’m asking you to give the Ukrainian Armed Forces superpowers and a never-ending supply of food and weapons.”

Then, it’s the big day. For centuries, the vast majority of Ukrainians have celebrated Christmas not with the rest of the world on the 24^th and 25^th of December but on the 6^th and 7^th of January, in line with the older Julian calendar. This year, the vast majority, including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, are abandoning the latter date and moving to the former. It’s part of a wider extrication from Russia, where Christmas is still celebrated on the 6^th.

Christmas Eve is known as Svyatyi Vechir, translating as Holy Evening. Twelve dishes, adhering to the Advent fast, are prepared for the table. The most important of them is kutia, an ancient pre-Christian dish made with poppy seeds, and mixed with honey, raisins, walnuts, and cooked wholewheat. When the first star is up, the elder of the house goes outside with the kutia and shouts to the feared pagan spirit Moroz (Frost) to come and join the family as they sit down at the table. When Moroz doesn’t appear, he is told to also not appear in the family’s crop fields.

At the end of the meal, the kutia is traditionally left on the table overnight for any ancestral souls who are also present, acting as a symbolic link between generations. Another such link is the Ukrainian version of the Christmas tree, which is called the Didukh (Grandfather Spirit). It’s made from sheaves of wheat from the family’s autumn harvest; when winter  is over, it’s burnt in the same field from which it was taken, symbolising the eternal cycle of rebirth, present in nature as well as in humans.

Then the night known as Kolyada (Carolling) begins. As the name suggests, it’s a time for singing carols announcing Christ’s birth, but also of praying for fortune and prosperity in the coming year, a continuation of pagan rituals asking ancestors for good luck in the new year.

Musicians wander from home to home performing Vertep, a Christmas street theatre that narrates the Nativity with music and drama. All participants are dressed up in costumes and disguises, including as goats, doctors, and devils. Their most important prop is the star of Bethlehem, traditionally multicoloured and many-rayed. As dawn breaks over frost-tinged villages and snowy city streets, Ukrainians greet each other with the cry, “Hrystos narodivsya!” (“Christ is born!”) and the reply, “Slavimo Yoho!” (“We praise Him!”)

The charm of Ukrainian Christmas has long spread beyond the country’s borders. The internationally known “Carol of the Bells”, for example, is originally a Ukrainian folk song called “Schedryk” sung on New Year’s Eve and tells the story of a little swallow flying into a family’s home, telling them of the plentiful and lucky year they have coming. Traditionally, when it was sung, the language was believed to have magical qualities. Arranged by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in 1916, it was performed in Carnegie Hall by the Ukrainian National Chorus in 1922, where American composer Peter J Wilhousky heard it and turned it into an English-language carol.

Let’s hope and do all we can so the words of “Schedryk” come true for Ukrainians and all our supporters.

If you would like to find out more about Ukrainian Christmas, you can visit this online exhibition at the Honchar Museum (English option available via the icon on the top right) which studies the Ukrainian version of the celebration in-depth. Click here. 

If you’d like to support Ukraine, Julia has set up a new fundraising page which you can see here. 

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