Easter is one of the most beloved (and most beautiful!) holidays in Ukraine. What were the traditions of celebration in Ukraine in ancient times, how Ukrainians dressed for the holiday and how they painted pysanky – see unique old photos from the archive of the Ivan Honchar Museum.
Easter egg maker from Kosiv in local everyday dress. 1920s. Artistic historical and ethnographic album by Ivan Honchar “Ukraine and Ukrainians”. Vol. 15. “Galicia”, Kosiv, Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Preparations for Easter begin in advance, but the most important things are usually done two weeks in advance. They start by cleaning the house and yard, decorating the house with festive towels, vytinankas, and flowers. The most favorite activity of the whole family is making Easter eggs: usually in Ukrainian families they make from 12 to 60 Easter eggs, depending on the number of family members. You can make Easter eggs throughout the entire Lent or on Maundy Thursday.
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From the Wednesday before Easter, people start baking Easter cakes or babki: one large one for consecration, several small ones for gifts. All Easter cakes in Ukraine were traditionally decorated with birds, crosses, and wreaths. On Easter Saturday, Easter eggs are made, and in the evening, an Easter basket is assembled. There they put Easter cakes, cheese Easter cakes, pysanky, pork, ham, lard or sausage, salt, horseradish, and a candle.
Ivan Honchar “Folk customs. Types and costumes in the Kyiv region” 1960s – 1970s. Paper, tempera. Collection of the National Center of National Culture and Arts “Ivan Honchar Museum”
“Christ is Risen” is how we greet our friends and family. We respond: “Truly He is Risen” or “Voskresne Ukraina” and repeat three times. Traditionally, children go to their neighbors and family on Easter and greet them with Easter poems and songs. This is called christening.
Easter is permeated with motifs of renewal in all spheres of life, say scientists from the Potter Museum. This also applies to the clothing of Ukrainians. People dressed most festively for Easter. Everyone wanted to acquire and wear at least one new thing for this holiday and give something new to their children. The best festive clothes were washed and prepared for the celebration.
Professor Stepan Kylymnyk, in his work “Ukrainian Year in Folk Customs in Historical Light,” describes the Easter attire of Ukrainians: “A fairy-tale picture near the church: hundreds of girls dressed in colorful checkered clothes: plakhty, embroidered shirts, in corsets, wreaths of periwinkle, gilded with gilding, numerous ribbons hanging from their shoulders, in red boots with copper horseshoes; young men and teenagers, festively dressed – in embroidered shirts, in wide trousers, girded with wide checkered belts, in boots with “gauge”, mostly in gray hats; old grandmothers in spare clothes, with wide edges, also in embroidered shirts, in linings, in goat boots, and grandfathers and masters in laced linen scrolls.”
