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OUR LIFE MONTHLY, published by Ukrainian National Women’s League of America Vol. XXXVI FEBRUARY No 2 EDITORIAL WHO’S “RICHER?” WHO’S “POORER?” December 1978 is behind us, as is January of 1979. The hustle and bustle of Christmas and the New Year is gone. The lights of the Christmas trees in the streets, in the hallways, and in store windows are dimmed... those lights that had begun to shine a month before Christ mas, long before the rising of the first star that had tradi tionally marked the advent of the birth of Christ. Holiday buying and gift-giving was heavy. For weeks after the holiday, stores were filled with people exchanging unwanted or inappropriate gifts. It would have been interesting to calculate how much wrapping paper and ribbon went into the garbage after the gift-gi- ving season... Of course some people had simplified matters. Instead of worrying about choosing appropriate gifts, they placed “gift certificates” in envelopes, and that was that. The problem was — this simplified approach elimi nated many of the feelings with which gifts ought to be imbued. If we stop and recall what holiday memories remain with us, how we have enriched our spirit, what impres sions remain, whether and how we have changed for the better during the holiday season, many of us may be disappointed. For many, there remain only superficial memories and some new needed or unneeded posses sions. But there may be some among us who, glancing at the newspaper Ukrainian Weekly of Dec. 31, 1978, noticed a letter written by Iryna Kalynets, a political pri soner in Siberia. It read in part as follows: “...What should I write about myself? Lviv was my cradle, I was born there, went to school there, completed my university studies there (Slavic studies), and from there the machine took me away to a foreign land. On the eve of my sepa ration — on Christmas day — I walked past all the churches in Lviv with the Kiev poet, Vasyl S. (now in Kolyma). The churches are filled during the holidays, the crowd spills out onto the streets; this is a moving river, the people make way for those who are freezing outside the church. But this is the only river, because everyone is in the spirit of the carols, the voices become stronger and tears cover the eyes. There is an unbelievable longing for the churches in the foreign lands, especially during the holidays. In Mordovia, a small community of us sat at a plain table by a candle made of wax which covers cheese. Sometimes we were able to obtain a branch of a fir tree — and we had a Christmas tree. From pearl-barley — ‘kutia’ to which we added honey, poppy seeds, nuts — anything we had saved for the holidays from the scant parcels we received. And we sang carols... And Ukraine was near us, and all our distant and close country men... “Memories did not abandon us for a minute, because in the closed spaciousness of the foreign lands one lives only through memories. ‘Ukraine is in our room. Ihor decorated the wooden partition with various cards— Scythian mementos, protraits of Mamays, Ukrainian cloth ing, scenes of Lviv, and several postcard of paint ings by Yaroslava Surmach. Books. A portrait of Taras. An icon of Mary embroidered by my friend, two more icons. And several of my embroideries — ‘servetky’ and ‘rushnyky’ “The first days when I was here alone, I longed for my language, for the sound of a native word. This longing I know from long ago, for me it is in tolerable. I would like to be with you, near you, as I was in my childhood with my grandfather. There, in that ‘preserved settlement’, the secrets — thanks to which I am unfolding the past — of the Ukrai nian holidays, traditions and rituals were revealed to me. Because in our past, in memories, and in the Bible, there are some five milleniums. “I do not regret that fate led me to such un expected travels. I suffered in remote places like a simple city dweller, such a vegetative existence, but how long can one ‘exist’? In my, in our home land the people are the same as before, only drow-
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