Happy 2007 to all my readers in absentia… and by absentia, I mean non-existence.
January 07 saw the annual advent of starched white shirts with flowing sleeves and crisp embroidery, parched onion-skin pages tucked inside the oily black covers of battered hymn books, groaning tables that differed in no way from any other holiday, birthday, or afternoon chi except for the glaring lack of meatballs and turkey:
It was Ukrainian Christmas. Христос Народився! Christ is born!
January 07 soothed my soul and filled me with the Christmas spirit I had longed for during the December holidays. And I think the shift in spirit can be found merely by looking at the traditional Ukrainian Christmas greeting: not Merry Christmas, which means so little to so many. But Christ is born. Christ is born. Why do we celebrate? Because he came. Why can we be filled with joy? Because he saved us. Christ with us. Christ mass. Christ is born.
And even though we didn’t throw kutya at the ceiling, as tradition demands, to see if the coming year would be prosperous, and even though (or I suppose because of the fact) we didn’t throw the kutya at my Baba, no matter how much she deserved it, I think this year will be a good one.
Christ is born. Christ is with us. And so we celebrate.
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