Svyatki a Yule Holiday

Russians and their former countrymen, Ukrainians, are a group that love to celebrate and take any excuse or humble event to transform it into a party or holiday -- prazdnik. These excuses would include birthdays, name’s days which are the feast day of the saint a person is named after, weddings, funerals, and of course, holidays.

These celebrations of family and friends coming together are joyous occasions, except for the funerals. However, at the post-funeral luncheon, or pominka, the deceased is remembered with fondness and everyone toasts to their memory -- vechnaya pamyat -- memory eternal.

The host is always hospitable, even if the event is a last minute one, and provides food such as appetizers or zakuski and beverages which include vodka, the perennial grog.

During the communist regime, after the Russian Revolution for a period of approximately seventy five years, the holidays celebrated were more secular instead of spiritual. New Year’s Day was a favorite.

Times have changed, and once again, the traditions have returned, if only from the underground where there were hidden for fear of retaliation by the regime. Imagine such a place -- no freedom to celebrate as one desired!

The Christmas holiday is celebrated for a period of two weeks until Epiphany or Theophany and is known as Svyatki. Papa tells me that people would go from one house to another, singing carols or kalyadki, eating and drinking, and good wishes abounded.

During these weeks, Svyatki traditions tied to the pagan past of Russia were also incorporated into the festivities. These traditions are known as gadaniye in Russian, which means divining or fortune telling, peering into the future to see if there is good fortune to be had.

The word gadaniye is derived from the root Hebrew gad, meaning fortune or luck and I’ve read that a deity named Gad, the god of good luck, was worshiped in ancient Arabia, Phoenicia, and Canaan.

The roaming gypsies of Russia, too, did much fortune telling, and Papa assures me that their predictions were more often than not, correct.

Not all had access to a gypsy, so they had to utilize their own methods.

The divining during Svyadki is undertaken in the evening or at night, mostly by young women, but also by young men.

The girls are primarily interested in determining who their future husbands will be, if they’ll be handsome or wealthy, and if their marriage will be fortunate.

The divination methods vary greatly from having a chicken or a rooster peck at personal items of the girls present in the room, to using beans, keys, the wax dripped from a candle to form an image, mirrors and candles, shoes, pans, towels.

For example, a girl takes off her left shoe and throws it over the gate. Based on where the shoe falls, she will either be married or remain at home.

Another method is to take a spiritual book and think of a question. The book is opened at random to a page and a line from the page read in answer to the question.

Finally, I think one of Papa’s methods is fairly accurate: the examination of the way the hair parts on the head to foretell how many times a person is to marry.

Papa checked my head and my sister’s and in both of our cases, he was right on: one for her and two for me.