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6 WWW. UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ГРУДЕНЬ 2012 DECEMBER HOLIDAYS AND THEIR FOLK CELEBRATIONS IN UKRAINE by Olesia Wallo Although Christmas is not celebrated in Ukraine until January, December is nevertheless filled with a variety of holiday traditions and folk festivities , most of them associated with the feast days of Christian saints. This phenomenon is e x- plained by the f act that in traditional Ukrainian culture, which was predominantly agrarian, the winter was a time to pause after the busy season of harvesting, to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, and to socialize. In December, youth especially would come together almost every evening for a festive gathering known as vechornytsi — some - times to work on handicraft projects such as e m- broidery, but mostly to play. The humorous songs, jokes, games, plays, and rituals with which the young people entertained themselves during some of these holidays have been preserved for us by cultural historians and ethnographers, and many of them have enjoyed a revival in Ukraine over the past two decades. St. Catherine, St. Barbara, and St. Nicholas, folk icons on g lass (from a private collection) . St. Catherine's Day December 7th is the feast day of the Christian martyr St. Catherine, considered to be the patron saint of young unmarried women. On this day, girls would gather early to cook for the vechor - nytsi , making dishes such as bors h ch and millet porridge. At dusk, they would go outside with the porridge and take turns to call out, “Come, come, my intended, to eat porridge with me!” listening for any noise in response, such as a dog's barking, and noting from which direction the noise came. This was done in order to find out in what part of the village a girl's future husband lived. Later on, boys would join the girls for the meal, followed by songs and games. On this day, each girl would also p lace a branch from a cherry tree in a pot of water; if the branch bloomed by Christmas, the girl would expect getting married that year. St. Andrew's Day On December 13th , the Ukrainian youth cel e- brated the day of St. Andrew, which was usually filled with games, pranks, and all kinds of merr i- ment. In the Podillia region (the contemporary Vinnytsia and Khmel'nytsk oblasts ), a popular St. Andrew's Day game involved a traditional hard sweet bread called kalyta . The girls would bake kalyta together, decora ting it and making a hole in the middle. At the vechornytsi that evening, the bread would be suspended from the ceiling on a ribbon, and both boys and girls would take turns trying to bite a piece off of it. Meanwhile, one boy was entrusted with the missio n to prevent them from biting the kalyta by telling jokes, tr y- ing to make everyone laugh, and by warding them off with a stick that had a soot - covered rag wrapped around its end. After everyone had tried
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