EDITORIAL: Ritual and tradition (04/19/98)

EDITORIAL

Ritual and tradition

During our celebrations of Easter according to the "old style," that is, in keeping with the Julian calendar, it is fitting to stop and consider why we celebrate this holy day the way we do. Often we lose sight of the significance of our beautiful traditions and, as a result, these customs become mere mechanical behaviors - something we do because we've always done it that way.

Easter for Ukrainians, as for all Christians around the world, is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Ukrainians, however, celebrate this most important of Christian holy days in a unique manner, with such customs as the blessing of Easter baskets, the exchange of pysanky and the singing of hahilky.

As in most of our holiday traditions, elements of our Easter observances can be traced back to the folk rituals of our pre-Christian ancestors. With the advent of Christianity, many of these rituals - related to agricultural life, the changing of the seasons and the memory of the deceased - were incorporated into our antecedents' new religious rites.

Our Easter baskets, for example, contain a sampling of meats, dairy products, horseradish root, specially baked ritual breads - paska and babka, as well as colored hard-boiled eggs known as krashanky and our famous pysanky. Once the baskets and their contents are blessed, all family members partake of the various foods, the "sviachene," on the morning of Easter.

Our hahilky, or spring ritual songs, may now be performed by youths on Easter, but they retain many of the old pre-Christian motifs that characterized our forebears' joyous celebrations of the coming of spring.

Pysanky, today known as Ukrainian Easter eggs, pre-date Christianity. They were important as talismans whose diverse symbols ensured a good harvest, health, good fortune or protection from illnesses and evil spirits. With the arrival of Christianity, the pagan symbols that adorned pysanky were augmented by Christian symbols of the Risen Christ, the Trinity, etc. Today they are exchanged by family members, friends and loved ones who choose particular designs appropriate for the recipient.

Respect for the dead is particularly important on St. Thomas Sunday, or Providna Nedilia, which also is part of the Easter cycle of traditions. On that day families commune with their deceased relatives and friends by partaking of a tryzna, a feast in commemoration of the dead, at gravesites. A portion of the meal, plus krashanky and pysanky are left on the graves. This tradition continues to this day (with perhaps the largest Providna Nedilia observance in the West taking place at the Ukrainian Orthodox Center in South Bound Brook, N.J.).

Eastertime, then, is truly important to us Ukrainians as both a religious observance and a celebration of our distinct Ukrainian culture. It is a period of great happiness, good cheer and good will toward others, as the spirit of renewal touches everyone and everything. Let us greet each other on this great occasion with our traditional "Khrystos Voskres - Voistynu Voskres!"