Back in Ukraine

By Walter Kish

The new year (under the new calendar) has come and gone, and I am back in Ukraine in what promises to be a new job, a topic on which I will probably write more about  in a future column.  It is New Year’s Eve under the old Orthodox Julian calendar and, for now, I am ensconced in a comfortable little apartment overlooking Prospect Svobody and the central square in Lviv.  Christmas carols boom out from speakers mounted on poles all over the square.  For the most part, they are traditional Ukrainian carols or kolyady, though every now and then I am jarred by the Ukrainian version of a Jingle Bells, O Come All Ye Faithful or Deck The Halls With Boughs of Holly.  Somehow, they don’t come off too well in Ukrainian.  Perhaps it is my own purist cultural inclinations or the translations are wanting, but I find them artificial.

Earlier in the day, during my stroll around town, I came across a novel addition to Lviv’s winter scene – a full-sized outdoor skating rink set up besides Lviv’s old town hall, or Ratush. It was full of skaters young and old, though it was obvious that most had limited experience on the blades that are second nature to most Canadians.  I can remember my youth in northern Quebec where, every winter, my father would make a skating rink in our back yard, and we would skate and play hockey almost every day until we dropped from fatigue.  The Lviv skating rink has become a veritable craze.  It can accommodate about a 100 skaters at any given time, and the lineups to get on over the holidays have often been lengthy and measured in hours. 

Festivities and events in Lviv surrounding the holidays are numerous.  The Dominican Cathedral has concerts of holiday music virtually every evening by groups from all over the oblast, culminating with a grand finale at the end of the month with close to 50 choirs and groups participating.  With the cathedral’s exceptional acoustics, it should be an inspiring performance indeed.

In the countless little towns and villages around Lviv, and indeed in most of Western Ukraine, the season is celebrated with the Vertep, whereby groups of people dressed in colourful costumes stroll between houses and public venues performing carols, nativity scenes and little morality plays that are part religious and part mythology going back to pre-Christian times in Ukraine.

It should be noted that the Christmas season is commemorated here in a much more serious fashion than in North America, where we usually pack a lot of celebration for the two or three days around Christmas and New Year’s Day.  In Ukraine, the whole country virtually shuts down for about two weeks from just before January 1 till after the Julian New Year’s Day on January 14, and sometimes even until after the Feast of Jordan and the Blessing of the Waters, which takes place on January 19.

This latter event is commemorated rather dramatically every year with thousands of people flocking to the shore of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, where the Patriarch performs the ritual blessing, and, in an interesting side ceremony, many dozen brave Kyivites commonly known as walruses take an annual plunge into the icy waters of the river.  Last year this was done in the midst of a deep freeze with temperatures of about minus 15 degrees.  This year promises to be a lot more accommodating for the walruses, with temperatures forecast to be in the plus seven- or eight-degree range with no sign of ice in sight.  Kyiv, like most of Europe and North America, is enjoying an unseasonably warm winter this year.

For Canadians in Kyiv, the highlight of the season should be the Shchedriy Vechir (Eve of the Feast of Jordan) dinner being planned at the Canadian Embassy where as well as enjoying the full 12-course traditional festive dinner, participants will be hearing the magnificent voices of the Vydubychi Monastery choir.

It is refreshing that most Ukrainians, particularly in western Ukraine, still have not succumbed to the overt materialism that surrounds our North American holiday celebrations and have managed to retain a lot of the traditional rituals and customs.  I am fortunate to be here at this time to enjoy them.