The whole Ukrainian winter season in one full-colour volume: the customs, the carols and the twelve meatless dishes of Sviata Vecheria, the Holy Supper of Christmas Eve.
Most Christmas books give Ukraine a page. This one follows the entire feast cycle the way Ukrainian families have kept it for centuries: from the Advent fast and the saints' days that announce the season (the Presentation of the Virgin, St. Catherine's, St. Andrew's, St. Barbara's and St. Nicholas Day), through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the masked revelry of Malanka, St. Basil's Day, and Yordan, the Baptism of Christ, when the waters are blessed and the season closes. Every feast is given with both of its dates, new calendar and old, so the reader can follow the season whether the family keeps December 25 or January 7.
Along the way it explains what the customs actually mean: the didukh, the sheaf of wheat that seats the ancestors at the table; the hay beneath the tablecloth and the place setting left for the absent; the kutia that opens the supper; the vertep, the puppet nativity theatre with angels on its upper floor and Cossacks on its lower; the eight-pointed Star of Bethlehem carried through the snow by the carollers; the yalynka tree; the night the animals are said to speak; and the divination games of St. Andrew's Eve. Regional practice is followed from Galicia, Bukovina and the Hutsul Carpathians to Podillia, Polissia and Slobozhanshchyna.
Two complete sections close the book:
The Twelve Dishes of Christmas Eve - all twelve recipes for the meatless Holy Supper: kutia, meatless borsch, uzvar, varenyky, holubtsi, pampushky with garlic, kasha, baked fish with vegetables, stewed cabbage with mushrooms, fried mushrooms with onion, beans with onion, and fruit compote.
Koliadky and shchedrivky - ten traditional carols in English, among them Shchedryk, the swallow song Mykola Leontovych arranged in 1916, sung at Carnegie Hall in 1922 and known around the world since 1936 as Carol of the Bells.
Written by Ukrainian author Liudmyla Pytel and illustrated in full colour throughout, this is a Ukrainian book about Ukrainian Christmas, told from inside the tradition. A closing chapter, "Christmas Today", carries it into the present, where a candle burns in a shelter and the koliada is still sung.
For readers of Christmas-around-the-world and folk-custom books, for Ukrainian families abroad who want the season written down for their children, for cooks planning a meatless Christmas Eve, and for librarians and teachers building winter holidays-around-the-world displays. 102 pages, full colour, with a full table of contents.
