Ukrainian Christmas Blessings

Much like Greeks, Russians, and other Slavic people, many Ukrainians (Orthodox and Catholic alike) celebrate Ukrainian Christmas today, according to the old “Julian” Calendar.
WILLIAM KURELEK, Ukrainian Christmas Eve (1973)

We have always celebrated both Christmases in our family.  “American” Christmas was the festive holiday for Christmas movies, carols, and Santa Claus. We would watch the skies for signs of Santa while driving home from my Uncle Mike and Aunt Sophia’s, and my sister Nadya and I often fell asleep in the car before we even got home.

Ukrainian Christmas was the more sacred winter holiday for us, connecting us to family but also to our ancestors. Sviat Vechir (Holy Night) dinner on Christmas Eve night was at the heart of the holiday, and we would go to Baba Dudycz’s house with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. Baba had her tree decorated, and around the house hung several of Baba’s pavuky (more on the pavuk can be found here). The small house was filled with family, and it always smelled amazing–frying onions, baked bread, borshch, mushroom gravy, the sweet kutia. My cousins and I amused one another with stories and games as we waited,occasionally entertained by adults who took turns interacting with us or watching television with Dido in the front room.

After seeing the first star in the sky, we said a prayer and often sang a Ukrainian carol, then feasted on the traditional dishes. I knew that Baba and my aunts were working in the kitchen, but I never really appreciated how much work it was until I prepared the dishes myself many many, years later. Baba and Dido Dudycz would beam as the meal began, so proud of their big, beautiful family; so happy to be sharing this treasured night.

There would always be a place set for our Beloved Dead, for our ancestors. The night felt like magic to me. I truly felt like our family from Ukraine would come to visit while we sat there, and I wondered which spirits from Baba and Dido’s lives back home made their way across the big ocean to visit with them, and with us.

There was never a doubt that some of them would come, that they could not be deterred by time or distance, because they were family; and where there is love, there is the most powerful of connections. If anyone could make a feast to entice the ancestors from “home,” it would be Baba.

Looking back, I realize that Sviat Vechir, even more than other rituals and holidays, formed my ideas about our relationships with our Beloved Dead; because even though I had not yet experienced a personal loss, I knew that after people died, they were not gone and forgotten. Like any relationship, we would have to work to nourish and maintain it. It was our job to remember and to honor them.

Many of my fondest memories are from the many years of Sviata Vecheria meals squeezed into that dining room around those long tables. This is also where I developed the idea that sharing a meal with loved ones is a sacred experience, and preparing food with intention is one of the greatest ways of showing love–because you could feel the love, taste the love in every bite of Baba’s cooking.

Baba 1987

Today the family has grown larger and spread out across the state, and even if we were able to all gather together (which is rare these days), there would be many faces missing from around that table. We’ve lost too many of our loved ones, and there is a hole in our hearts that is full of memories but still aches for them. But when my sister and I gather at my parents’ house, and my cousins gather with my aunts and uncles–the same traditional dishes are made with love, the prayers are said and carols may be sung, memories are shared, and our family who have died are with us. I have no doubt that Baba and Dido make every stop to see all of their family.

So when I put portions of every dish on the ancestor plate, I serve them before myself, and I whisper the names of the loved ones we have lost. The room, although not as full as Baba’s house, gets a little cozier, a little more full, and I know that they have come. Because we do get small miracles and moments of grace in this lifetime. I can feel them still beaming and loving us–because love is the most powerful of connections, and what is remembered, lives.

Veselyh Sviat. Христос народився! Merry Christmas.

Finally Spring

Some months are so full they rush by in a blur. April 2013 was like that. After ICFA, there was a Spring roadtrip, followed by C2E2 and a wonderful meeting (resulting in an exciting announcement to be made in the near future). In between, there were family obligations, book club and school visits, beloved dead to be remembered, and deadlines to be met.

Then came May and finally Spring. Warm weather arrived, and with it the joy of open windows and fresh breezes that make a morning cup of coffee taste even better.

Yesterday was Ukrainian Easter (celebrated according to the Julian calendar).  We began our day with the traditional breakfast of eggs, rich egg bread, beets mixed with horseradish, “lamb” butter, cheese, ham and sausage. All of it was blessed in baskets adorned with embroidery on the afternoon before in the church parking lot. I love this tradition, probably because it’s tied to food, and the sharing of meals is so important to me and my family.

babka2013

I remember our first Spring in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2003. I was able to find a small Ukrainian community that had services out of a Roman Catholic church. That year we blessed our basket in the courtyard alongside Ukrainians born in Germany and those recently from Ukraine. Our baskets were nearly the same, adorned with varying styles of Ukrainian embroidery.

Looking around, that was my first experience of how important community must have been for my grandparents transplanted to Chicago from Ukraine after WWII.  There is comfort is celebrating beloved traditions, even on foreign soil with people you do not know.

Food also helps us to connect–an ocean between us, on different land, we can still eat the same kind of foods, the same basic recipes, passed down from grandparents to parents to children and on and on.

Recipes are a lot like stories: they can be carried and shared; they can be written down or remembered; they vary from region to region, incorporating the influence of the land and people around them. Recipes also have the ability to transcend time and space, to connect us to those who have gone and to those who are yet to come. Like stories, they’re a little bit of magic. They provide us with opportunities to remember and reconnect.

Over the last decade, I have been slowly building up my recipes. I’m not very organized and I’ve never scrapbooked, but this thing I have somehow kept up. I don’t usually print them out, choosing instead to write each recipe on a card, adding notes, crossing things out as I adapt a dish.

It’s always been important to me. My box of recipes is one of the few things that has travelled around the world with me. Maybe it’s because I see it as a sister activity to writing and storytelling? Maybe it’s because I hope that someday those recipes will provide my children and grandchildren with a window into my life–the treasured meals I have been able to share with them and other people I hold dear. Maybe it’s because writing a recipe down feels like preserving a little of the magic.

If you have ever shared a meal with me, I thank you.

If you’ve ever given me a recipe, rest assured that it is treasured.

If you’d like to share a recipe, I would be honored to add it to my collection. 

recipe

 

The Sticky Subject of Kutia a.k.a. Ukrainian “Porridge”

This morning Neil Gaiman was in a NY cab and tweeted about his Ukrainian cab driver, who picked up Neil because he was a man and “if 1st fare is a woman is bad luck all day.”

I replied by explaining that this tradition is likely related to the Ukrainian superstition that a man should be the first one to enter a house (or even call a house) on New Year’s Day. I also shared the tradition of throwing kutia (porridge) onto the ceiling on Christmas Eve. If it sticks, it means good luck for the household, and the more kernels that stick, the greater the luck.

After tweeting:

What I have learned this morning: 1) Ukrainian Taxi drivers are superstitious 2) Ukrainians throw porridge at the ceiling for luck.

Neil apparently received quite a few tweets from Ukrainians in Ukraine who had not heard of this tradition. Some had not heard of the porridge.

After a few tweets redirected my way (thanks, Neil 😉 ), I decided to quickly write this post with a few highlights.

  • The Ukrainian “porridge” to which I was referring is kutia. Some people describe it is as a flummery. Neither is quite right, but they’re close.
  • Kutia is an ancient dish that was once eaten at the solstice and is now the first of the twelve dishes to be eaten on Christmas Eve dinner (called Sviata Vecheria)
  • A nice essay about the variation in Sviat Vechir traditions can be found here, by Orysia Tracz, who has written extensively about Ukrainian traditions.
  • There are several recipes online, and as many variations as there are for Irish oatmeal. Everyone has their own particular way of making it. Google “kutia recipe” for some ideas.
  • The basic recipe we use is to first sort & rinse the bulgur wheat, soak it overnight (6-8 hours), boil it for an hour or so (depends on how long you soaked it and how firm you like it), then rinse again. Add poppyseeds, raisins, crushed walnuts, and honey to taste. In my opinion, the key is in the honey. (Ukrainians have been beekeepers for generations, and Ukrainian honey was prized. Here’s a link for more information from Medyana Rosa.)
  • There is a tradition of throwing the kutia up to the ceiling on Sviat Vechir. My grandparents did this when my father was young, and it continued into my childhood. Our Ukrainian friends and family did this and exchanged stories about it.

The things that I find fascinating about this exchange is that many Ukrainians in Ukraine have not heard of the traditions, while Ukrainians in Diaspora (Canada, US, Australia, Argentina) have likely heard of it from parents or grandparents, even if they don’t still celebrate in the traditional ways.

A few weeks ago I was part of Zlukacamp, a conference with Ukrainian students studying in the US, and the subject of traditions came up. When I was growing up, I was taught (from my parents, grandparents, Ukrainian dancing and school, church) that because Ukraine was not free, it was up to us to learn the language, study the history and traditions, and keep them alive.

My grandparents came from Ukraine (via Germany and the Displaced Persons Camps) in the 1940s. The Ukraine I learned about was very much the Ukraine of the 1930s and 40s, the language of that time, the traditions of that time.

Now Ukraine is an Independent country, but some things have been lost, and other things have changed over time. Like any country and people, they have grown a great deal in the last several decades.

So I’m not really surprised that the tradition is lost, but I’m happy to have been able to share it with some people on Twitter, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to learn about it as a child, to celebrate it as an adult, and even to write about it in my novel, The Silence of Trees (kutia and Sviat Vechir are a part of the story).

I look forward to someday seeing Ukraine of the 21st century, and I hope to be able to share with them and others some of the treasures from an older Ukraine, a Ukraine rich in folklore, fairy tales, and folk arts.