Easter

    For most people, Easter is the most important religious holiday.

    Easter cake (’Kulich’) and painted eggs (’Krashanki’) are the symbols of Ukrainian Easter and obligatory food on the table this day. Kulich is baked from yeast dough in the form of cylinder.

    The krashanky and pysanky (Easter eggs) are an old pre-Christian element and have an important role in the Easter rites. Pysanka shells have been found in archaeological sites from more than 3000 years ago, and many of those designs are still being used on pysanka today. On this day they are given as gifts or exchanged. Ukrainian kids play their favorite Easter game: knocking the eggs. If you knock somebody’s egg and you egg is not broken than you are the winner.

    There is also the rite of sprinkling with water, which is still carried on in Western Ukraine on the next day afrer Easter (Wet Monday, Oblyvanyi ponedilok). It is practiced by young people, the boys usually splashing the girls with water.                                                           

    Preparation for Easter starts seven weeks ahead of time with the advent of Lent. Believers don’t eat meat and animal products.

    Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, is known  as Willow Sunday. People bring home willow branches which have been blessed in church.

    The week is dedicated to preparing for Easter. The Thursday before Easter is called Clean Thursday. According to the tradition one should bathe before sunrise on this day. The house must be clean too.

    Good Friday is the day that the women of the family bake “paska”,  Easter bread.

    On Saturday children dye Easter eggs to add to the Easter basket which will be blessed in church. It also includes pysanka, salt, paska, sausage and ham. In the evening people go to church for the Easter mass, which lasts all night.