Щасливих Великодніх свят! - Happy Easter!

It Was A Pleasure To Meet You

By Mariia Palchak

Easter is one of the brightest, most celebrated holidays in Ukraine. ‘Easter’ in Ukrainian is ‘Velykden’, which can be translated as ‘Great Day’, which shows how important this holiday is in the country. It has a lot of unique traditions and rituals inherited from the ancestors. However, some of those traditions have modified over the years to suit modern families customs. In Ukraine Easter is celebrated the week after Catholic Easter (in 2023 it is celebrated on April 16). Usually, the preparation for Easter begins two months in advance. Lots of people lent and fast and are very strict about it. Everyone awaits Easter day, as it always brings cheerful mood to the country and gathers families together to celebrate.

Orthodox Ukrainians have the same tradition as Catholics about celebrating Palm Sunday, but there are certain differences. The holiday itself is called Willow Sunday (Verbna nedilia), and pussy willow branches are used to bestow health and luck upon a person this day. There is a tradition with deep pagan roots of gentle switching of one person by another.

When it comes to Easter week itself, Thursday and Friday deserve a special attention. Clean or Holy Thursday (Chystyi Chetver) is a very important day of the Easter week. This day all the family members should take a bath or a shower before the sunrise and then all the house should be cleaned during the day. Also you can start baking Easter bread ‘kulich’ or ‘paska’ this day.

There are certain rituals concerning Easter bread as well. The person baking it should do it in silence and with happy thoughts only. There’s a saying that if you’re trying to bake ‘paska’ in a bad mood or being in argument with someone it will never have a proper look or taste.

‘Good Friday’ follows ‘Clean Thursday’, no hard, physical work should be done this day. You are not supposed to listen to loud music or have any arguments with others. It is the day for staying calm and finding harmony inside you.

On Saturday people usually put Easter products in a basket to prepare for visiting the Mass in the church.

Except for already baked or bought Easter bread, Easter eggs (pysanka and krashenka) should definitely get into the Ukrainian Easter basket. Pysankas are eggs with special ornament decoration and folk patterns. Each of these patterns have their

special meaning. Krashenka is an egg, dyed with a food colouring. Originally it was red colouring only, which symbolized the blood that Jesus shed for the sins of the people.

People can also put baked meat and wine in their baskets. And when the basket is already set, they can head to the church. Lots of people choose to spend the whole night at the church, as this is how long the Easter mess is going on in Orthodox cathedral. However, some prefer to come early in the morning to have themselves and their Easter baskets blessed with Holy water, that is being sprinkled by a priest all over the people, who gathered around the church on Easter day. After the mess is over and everyone got their blessing, it is time to go home and start the festivities. The traditional Easter greeting is ‘Christ is Risen’, and the reply to this is ‘He is Risen indeed’. On your way from church you are supposed to greet everyone you meet and spread this gospel.

When people finally get home they set the table, but despite of having all the culinary treats in front of them, the meal should start with Easter cake. Every single crumb should be eaten and never thrown away.

And of course, it is not possible to celebrate Ukrainian Easter without playing ‘navbytky’. To play this game you should pick one of the Easter eggs and so does your opponent. Then you smash two eggs together, saying Easter greetings to each other. The winner is the one whose egg remained unbroken!

Великодніх свят!