My first Ukrainian Easter began around 3:30 in the morning. That is when Rob decided we would need to get up in order to get to the church around 4. The last time I can remember getting up that early on Easter Sunday was when I still believed in the Easter Bunny and I was eager to hunt down some eggs. That morning I ran to my parents’ room and was quickly, and quite sleepily, told to get back in bed. Easter in Ukraine went a bit differently. There is no Easter Bunny here, and everyone gets up well before dawn.
As I was chugging the coffee that we made to try and keep from falling asleep during the services, I bitterly thought to myself, “There is no way all those babusias are going to be up and at church at 4 a.m.” I don’t think I have ever been more wrong in my entire life.
As we walked toward the church, which is conveniently located across the street from Rob’s dorm, we saw that not only was the church probably full, there were hundreds of people standing in the church yard as well. All of the people were standing in rows that formed a spiral path around the church. Each family had a basket or two of food in front of them. Each basket had different food in it. Some were more traditional and only contained simple foods like eggs, sausage, butter and water. Others were a bit more exotic. I even saw one basket full of bananas, oranges and other fruits. Every single basket, however, had a traditional Ukrainian cake called a paskha with a candle stuck in the middle of it. The glow from the baskets lit up the church yard and I longed to take a picture of the Ukrainian men, women, children and babusias who were keeping vigil so early in the morning.
We walked into the church to see what was going on in there. The priest was leading some sort of a prayer where the response was, “Christ rises.” The church itself was beautiful. Large 150 year old murals of saints were painted on the walls. The alter was white with gold decorations. The newer paintings were full of bright colors, especially blue. Votive candles hung around the altar and several candle stands were placed around the room for intentions. The only things that seemed out of place were the two neon signs behind the altar. The one on the left said Christ and the one on the right said rises. I would have thought that they were only there for Easter, but Rob saw them there during Christmas too. They did help me memorize the proper response for the mass though, so I suppose they are pretty useful.
Having never been to a Ukrainian Orthodox service before, I was amazed with how relaxed and free the people were. Everyone was constantly moving around. They would go into the church for a minute, buy and light a taper, go back outside, talk with their friends and family by their basket and then do everything all over again. It really felt like a celebration.
Rob and I stood outside behind a row of baskets for a while to try and figure everything out. As we were standing there, people came by ringing bells. One person was collecting money for the poor or the Church we assumed. As the other woman walked by, people took small rolls out of their baskets and dropped them into her bag. It was still only around 4:30 in the morning and I was rather cold, so we decided to go back inside the church to warm up a bit.
I feel like every time I attend a new event in Ukraine, something always goes awkwardly wrong. Well, this time it was our timing. As we climbed the steps to get into the church, people carrying large banners began processing out of it. Unable to run in front of the procession or make our way into the church around it, we were trapped on the top step in front of the church. The five men with banners were followed by a man in church vestments and the priest. To make everything even more uncomfortable, the priest stopped right next to me on the step and began addressing the crowd. In such a small town, everyone there knew we were the Americans and I could just imagine them wondering to themselves, and their neighbors, “What are those I crazy Americans doing up there?” I wanted to disappear, but all I could do was try and shove Rob behind the church door so that I’d at least be behind the priest instead of right next to him. Finally, he finished whatever he was saying with “Christ rises.”
“Christ rises,” I mumbled back and the procession continued on. We went inside the church again, partially to get a better look at it without so many people and partially to escape the eyes of the curious Ukrainians.
When we made it back outside, we ran into one of Rob’s acquaintances. He works as a translator, so he speaks English fairly well. We got back into line with him and his family in order to be blessed. After a fifteen minute wait, we saw the banners slowly moving toward us and heard laughter.
I should have realized what we were in for since earlier in the morning a random Ukrainian man came up to talk to us. He was the nephew of Rob’s Ukrainian tutor, but the thing that struck me was that he was absolutely soaked. I wondered why he had been sweating so much on such a cold night since it looked like he had just ran a marathon in 90 degree weather.
It turns out that Ukrainian priests are just very thorough when they bless people. Instead of sprinkling a few drops of water on the crowd to symbolically bless everyone, they dip a small tree branch, leaves and all, into a bucket of water and fling water at people. We hoped that standing in the back we would stay relatively dry, but the priest made sure that we got wet. I personally got splashed with water three times. After the second time, the man next to me ducked down and shouted that he had gotten water in his ear. Rob compared the experience to Splash Mountain. I really just appreciated that the Ukrainians were laughing about this too. I couldn’t have held my composure as a mini downpour soaked us all.
Tired, wet and cold, we said goodbye to Rob’s friend and made our way back home where we quickly changed right back into our pajamas and went back to bed.
Posted on April 15, 2010
0