Ukrainian Holiday Mayhem

Rubik’s Holiday Calendar

Kathrina and I arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk in the middle of December, just as the fall semester was wrapping up at our universities. We had a small window in which we could meet our coworkers and students before they all melted away for the winter holidays.

What holidays you ask? Surely the holidays in Ukraine can’t be as complex as the December holiday stew we have simmering in our great American melting pot- Chanukah, Saint Nicholas Day, Christmas, Kwanza, National Bicarbonate of Soda Day (December 30^th), and Festivus (for the rest of us).

In the US we think of Christmas as being celebrated on the 25^th of December, but that's not the case in Ukraine. In Ukraine they celebrate Christmas on January 7^th. The reason is that January 7^th is December 25^th.

What?

As it turns out, Western churches base their liturgical calendar on the Julian calendar, while Eastern churches use the Gregorian calendar. The two calendars are currently 13 days apart, so that in both religious traditions Christmas is celebrated on December 25^th, they just differ on which day is called December 25^th.

Of course that affects New Year as well. In Ukraine New Year’s Eve falls on the 13^th of January, and the first day of the new year on the Gregorian calendar is January 14^th of the Julian calendar.

So Ukrainians celebrate Christmas on the 7^th and New Year’s on the 14^th of January, right?

Well, no…

Many Ukrainians do celebrate Christmas on January 7^th. However, there is also a sizeable Catholic population in Ukraine, particularly in western Ukraine, so those Ukrainians observe Christmas on the 25^th of January.

As for New Year, well, that’s celebrated on January 1^st, since it’s when the clocks on our computers switch numbers. (Change your calendar page, Dave.)

So, to sum up: some people celebrate Christmas on the 25^th of December, everybody celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1^st, and most people celebrate Orthodox Christmas on January 7^th. By Old New Year's Eve on January 13^th, everyone is too exhausted to make much fuss about yet another holiday…

Except for the fact that at about this time we started hearing about “Second Christmas Eve.” I thought I finally had Ukrainian holidays figured out, and then they threw me another curve ball. I was totally baffled. I thought that we had already had two Christmas Eves, and that they took place on December 24^th and January 6^th. If anything, wouldn’t the upcoming holiday be third Christmas Eve? What does that even mean?! How many times can one guy be born?

It turns out that the Ukrainian word for Christmas Eve (святвечір) means, literally, “Holy Evening.” In Ukrainian, the word, святвечір, is used to describe Christmas Eve and the celebration that accompanies Epiphany (a holiday commemorating the baptism of Christ). The term “Second Christmas Eve” is therefore a direct translation from Ukrainian. It doesn’t literally mean that Ukrainians celebrate the birth of Christ again!

You following all this? If not, here it is again in pictures:

How We Celebrated the Holidays in Ukraine

We got together with a small group of people on the evening of Orthodox Christmas Day (January 7^th), including a couple of Americans involved in the Sister City program. (Ivano-Frankivsk and Arlington, Virginia are sister cities. What are the chances of that?) It was there that we met Ihor and Marichka. Who are they, you ask? Well that’s simple: our landlady’s daughter has a sister-in law (Marichka) whose boyfriend’s grandparents (Ihor’s grandparents) live in a small village called Sloboda-Dolyns’ka, about an hour west of Ivano-Frankivsk. Our relationship with Ihor and Marichka being exactly 47 minutes old, we were invited to Ihor’s grandparent’s house on January 8^th to celebrate Christmas with their family and friends and spend the night in a really cool village farmhouse (complete with cow). We returned to Sloboda Dolyns’ka with Ihor and Marichka on the 18^th to celebrate Epiphany. The following is therefore a compiled account of spending two Ukrainian winter holidays with the grandparents of our landlady’s daughter’s sister-in-law’s boyfriend… in short, our new friends.

I should take a moment to describe the village. It’s located along a stream running north from the regional center of Dolyna, which has a population 20,900. The village itself is listed as having 640 residents. The homes in the village are arranged in two long rows that run parallel to the stream on either side and are perched on a little rise that looks down into the stream valley. At the north end of the village is a small church. On Sunday morning we were able to stand at the edge of the rise behind the farmhouse and hear the faint sounds of mass drifting up from the church in the valley below. The air is clear and fresh, and a peaceful silence pervades the village, which is surrounded by thick forest.

The farmhouse is cozy. Ihor’s grandmother met us at the back door wearing a traditional Ukrainian headscarf and a friendly, open smile. His grandfather bustled around the farmyard, a picture of rural industry. As we were ushered out of the cold and into the house, we found ourselves embraced by a warmth that didn’t emanate from the kitchen stove alone. Stepping into the entryway we removed our shoes (which is required Ukrainian social etiquette) and peered into the kitchen off to our right. A riot of delicious smells wafted from the kitchen, which was liberally hung with pots, pans and an assortment of kitchen utensils. The smells focused our attention on our empty bellies and hinted at the coming feast.

Stepping out of the entryway and into the house itself, we found ourselves ensconced by wood. Wood floors and paneling gave the residence a solid, earthy feel. The four rooms were arranged in a square so that you could go from room to room and make a complete circuit of the house. In each room stood a large, old-fashioned ceramic heating unit. The family rarely uses these since they had central heating installed, but their presence intensified the house’s quaint comfort.

Directly behind the house is a barn, and of course no barn would be complete without a cow. When we went to visit her, we were surprised at how much warmer it was in the cow’s quarters than it was even in the cozy house. She chewed quietly and contentedly in her stall as we entered. Kathrina gave her a friendly pat on the flank, and she emptied her bowels in a demonstration of gratitude or affection, it was difficult to ascertain which. Stepping back outside, we met the family dog. He lives in the barn as well but has his own room. He looked at us, stared for a moment, then trotted back inside. No food, no affection. I’m sure he was well aware of the preparations going on inside the house. Who could blame the insolent disdain directed towards us stingy humans, who were staring at “the farm dog” in unabashed pleasure that came with the novelty of visiting the Ukrainian countryside?

The member of the family who received the lion’s share of our attention, however, was the kitten. He follows Ihor’s grandma around the house begging for food and goes absolutely bonkers for eggs. It’s like catnip for farm cats. When we returned for our second visit on January 18^th, this time with cat toys, he was noticeably thicker in the middle. His ability to jump was hampered by the egg storage unit he had installed on his undercarriage, but he did play with the cat toys continuously throughout the evening. We can only hope that cat-toy calisthenics will help him regain the ripped physique he had during the peak of his kittenhood three weeks ago.

So anyway, back to the holidays.

Tradition has it that when you arrive at someone’s house to celebrate a holiday, you don’t just knock on the door and get invited inside. You have to earn the hospitality of your hosts by singing carols outside the front door until you’re deemed worthy of entrance. Our Ukrainian is good enough to say, “Hello,” “I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer,” and “I like cats,” so rather than sing along with the group, Kathrina and I can only stand awkwardly and smile benignly as our new friends worked to gain entry to the festivities. They did well with their caroling, and we were soon drooling in front of a pile of delectables.

You begin a Ukrainian Christmas celebration with a table packed full of food. As we were seated, we were confronted with a variety of mayonnaise-based salads (which, by the way, is very popular here; there are entire sections of the grocery store stocked with a mindboggling array of mayo varieties); salads made from beets; plates of cheeses and cold cuts, including холодец (kholodets, meat suspended in gelatin); a bowl full of fruit; and a selection of home-baked breads. There was way more food than our group could have possibly eaten, but Ukrainian hospitality is legend! However, Ukrainian Christmas isn’t celebrated in an hour or two, it lasts for hours and continues well into the night. Periodically, a new dish is brought to the table and passed around. (Had we known that, we wouldn’t have gone so completely nuts on the mayo salads!) My favorite is голубці (holubtsi), which are cabbage leafs stuffed with meat, rice and spices. When we returned to celebrate “Second Christmas Eve,” we were treated to a similar feast, except that none of the dishes contained meat. My favorite dish from this celebration was кутя (kutya), a sort of soup with wheat, poppy seeds, and nuts in a broth made from honey.

Another Ukrainian tradition is an ongoing stream of toasts given throughout the evening by those seated around the table. Toasts are made to family, friends, health, being together, the new year, the old new year, Christmas, “Second Christmas Eve,” and any number of hopes, wishes and gratitudes that one wishes to acknowledge publically. We were told that the pressure to drink alcohol during these situations can be quite intense. As it turns out, nobody cares what you drink, as long as you raise your glass and toast to the general merriment along with everyone else.

Celebrating the holidays with Ukrainians also helped us solve a cultural mystery: In the US, when we have a party, we don’t typically have an end time. We kind of sense when we’ve been at a party too long and decide individually when to leave. Different people have different party tolerances, so not everybody leaves all at once. And even when you do decide to go, goodbyes at the door can drag on for some time, especially if you’re the last group to leave. Not so in Ukraine. We’ve seen this done by Ukrainians several times, including in Chernihiv: everybody abruptly stands up, heads to the door, and leaves. In under thirty seconds you go from sitting at the table, eating one more of the голубці (although you’re not sure why, since you were full three hours ago), to shivering on the back porch. How do they know when to do that? What sort of Ukrainian mind meld occurs, where each guest is so tuned in to all the other guests that they know just when to get up and leave? The answer, my friends, lies in the coffee. When your hosts serve you coffee, they are telling you to leave. You have approximately seven minutes to drink your final beverage, and then they’ll be locking the door behind you. Party’s over, it’s been a slice, we’ll do this again sometime. (I had to ask for this explanation, by the way. Originally I thought it was magic.)

Aside from the eating and drinking and toasting and eating, we had the chance to experience other holiday traditions. When we returned to Sloboda Dolyns’ka for “Second Christmas Eve” we celebrated Epiphany Ukrainian-style. The first task before enjoying another delicious meal was to mark the house with crosses. We helped hang crosses on the front gate and on the well. Additionally, we watched Ihor mark the doors to the house and barn with crosses drawn in wet dough. It was explained to us that this had been done in biblical times to prevent the authorities from killing your children. Next we tied stalks of dried grains around tree branches in the yard to ensure the health of the fruit-bearing trees during the upcoming year. The last tradition was my favorite. The four of us (Ihor, Marichka, Kathrina and I) worked as a team to bring good fortune to the house during the new year. We went from room to room in the house and then out into the barn doing the following things: Ihor walked with a bowl of holy water, sprinkling it in each room as a blessing. Marichka and Kathrina had a bowl of beans, which they tossed on the floor of each room. My job was the best of all considering how my appetite had been whet by the smells emanating from the kitchen: I got to carry a piece of unleavened bread, fresh out of the oven, and eat a piece in each room of the house and barn. It was explained to us that the holy water purifies and sanctifies each room. Eating the bread is to ensure that there will be times of plenty during the new year. Not even grandma could explain why we threw the beans though.

Now that we’re up to speed on the winter holidays in Ukraine, it’s time to move on to new challenges. Next week we’ll finally begin teaching classes at our universities!