Walter
Kish
Every
September, the
This
is but one example of the many festivals and fairs held here that make
fall a season of feasting and celebration culminating in the well-known
Thanksgiving Day holiday.Of course,
such fall events are a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of
recorded history, being part of the cycle of the seasons and the agricultural
practices inextricably tied to them.
Not
surprisingly, Ukrainian folk culture is rich in traditions and feasts that
would mark the harvest and the end of the hardest labour
that comprised the peasant’s annual cycle of toil.In
fact autumn was probably the time of year that marked the greatest concentration
of festivities in the Ukrainian calendar.
The
end of grain harvesting, typically in August, was celebrated with special
rituals known as “Obzhynky”.A
clump of unreaped grain was tied into a
sheaf called the “Saviour’s beard” or “Grandfather’s
beard” and left at the edge of the field as an offering to God. The last
sheaf harvested was carried in procession to the house of the local master
or noble where it was ceremoniously placed under the house icon, and the
ritual followed by an evening of feasting, singing and revelry.The
last day of August was popularly known as the “Horses Easter”, and all
the horses were given an official day of rest and special rations of food.
Following
the harvests, the period between the feast days of St Semen (September
14) and St Demetrius (November 8) marked the season of “vechornytsi”,
the prime courting period of the year.During
this time, the young unmarried men and women of the village would focus
on the pleasant business of finding a spouse.Evening
get-togethers, known as “Vechornytsi” would be
arranged where the young people of the village would gather ostensibly
to engage in communal folk arts and crafts, but whose real purpose was
to enable them to indulge in talking, singing, flirting and wooing.The
“starosty” and the village’s official and unofficial
matchmakers would be busily engaged in trying to arrange suitable marriages
for all those of eligible age.
Needles
to say, the results of all this, was a flurry of late autumn marriages,
which provided for several months worth of wedding celebrations which became
a common feature of the post-harvest season.
Fall
was also the prime season for church feast days known as “Praznyks”
celebrating a wide variety of religious events that brought the whole community
together for services and celebrations that would last for days at a time.
The
feast of St Demetrius was generally acknowledged as the official beginning
of winter, however from a practical point of view, the fall season of feastings
and partying usually continued until the Feast of St Phillip on November
27, which marked the start of “pist”, or fasting
preceding the coming of the Christmas holy days.
For
most Ukrainians, fall was undoubtedly the most enjoyable time of year –
the grueling toil of the spring and summer was over, the harvest was done
and sufficient food had been stored for the coming year, the rigours
of the winter weather were still to come, and there was time for some rest,
socializing and enjoying the year’s bounty.
Although
in our day and age, celebrating Thanksgiving has become more symbolic than
a real celebration of the year’s harvest, we should take some time during
this holiday to reflect on our common past and appreciate the meaning and
importance such rituals once had for our Ukrainian ancestors.