Albert Bryski grew up on the Canadian prairies in the middle of the 20th century. His farming family was Polish Catholic on his father’s side and Ukrainian Orthodox on his mother’s. Their Christmas celebrations were largely drawn from his mother’s customs but the family marked it on December 25th rather than on January 7th. In his autobiography Saskatchewan Farm Boy, he recounts the special day.
The most important part of Christmas was the Christmas Eve evening meal called “Holy Supper” in literal translation. According to custom, all members of the family should be home that night for a family reunion. 0ur last Christmas Eve supper on the farm where our whole family of six was present occurred in 1951. The next time we would all be present as one unit had to wait for another thirty years in the city of Winnipeg.
The supper on this special evening differed from other evening meals, having twelve Lenten dishes, as a symbol of the twelve Apostles who gathered at the Last Supper.
In many households the dishes were prepared with a vegetable shortening or cooking oil, omitting all animal fat, milk and milk products, because Christmas is preceded by a period of fast which ends on Christmas Day after midnight or morning church service. The day of the Christmas Eve is a strict fast in commemoration of the hardships endured by the Virgin Mary, Jesus’s blessed mother, en route to Bethlehem. The table was set according to time-honoured tradition. It was the chore of the children to cover the table with a small handful of fine hay in memory of the Christ Child in the manger. Over it my mom spread her very best tablecloth adorned with embroidery that she had lovingly and carefully done by lamplight, seated at the same table through long winter evenings. We would also spread hay on the floor of the kitchen and the living room. My father would scatter walnuts, filberts, pecans, Brazil nuts, almonds, and peanuts, all in the shell, in the areas where we wouldn’t walk on them. After supper, while the older people visited and sang Ukrainian Christmas carols, we young people would search out the nuts, and take turns with the nutcracker to shell them and enjoy this special treat.
Bread (kalach), symbolizing prosperity, was the main table decoration. Three round, braided loaves, which my mom had baked the previous day, were placed one on top of the other with a candle inserted into the top loaf. The bottom loaf was encircled with tiny twigs of evergreen left over from trimming our Christmas tree. Lit candles on both sides of the loaves completed the table decoration. If a member of the family had died during the year, a place was set for that person in the belief that the spirit of the deceased unites with the family on that Holy Night. A lighted candle was always placed in the window as an invitation to any homeless stranger to join the family in celebrating the birth of Christ.
In many Ukrainian households before the evening meal, a spoonful of each dish was mixed into the feed of the domestic animals, because animals were the first creatures to behold the newborn Christ. The first star in the eastern sky announces the time for the beginning of the meal. It was the children’s duty to watch for the star. This “honour” often fell to me. I suspected it was to keep me from underfoot during the meal preparation.
Each member of the family was dressed in their Sunday best. Ukrainian fathers, in keeping with tradition, would bring a small bundle of wheat, or what was called “did” or “didukh” (grandfather), a symbol of the gathering of the clan. The father would greet everyone formally with traditional salutations, expressing joy that God had favoured us with good health and general well-being. The sheaf was then placed in the corner of the living room and remained there until New Year, when it was taken out and burned.
We would all gather around the table, and begin the meal with the Lord’s prayer in Ukrainian. The first dish was kutya, a preparation of cooked wheat dressed with honey, ground poppy seed, and sometimes chopped nuts. This ritual dish of very ancient origin has survived innumerable generations without losing its importance in the Christmas festivity. My father would raise the first spoonful of kutya, invoking Gods grace, then greet the family with the traditional Ukrainian Christmas greeting, “Khrystos Rodyvsya” (Christ is born), to which we would reply in unison: “Slavimo Yoho!” (Let us glorify Him). Following this, everyone had to partake of the kutya, if only but a spoonful. Occasionally, my uncle would take a spoonful of kutya and carefully fling it at the ceiling. If it stuck that meant a prosperous year. My mom was not crazy about this tradition.
Kutya was followed with a serving of my mom’s most excellent borsch. After which came one or more preparations of fried fish, two kinds of meatless cabbage rolls made of buckwheat and rice. My mom was famous for her cabbage perogies, or vereneki or perohi as we knew them, and her potato-cottage-cheese ones with a fried butter-and-onion sauce. We also had mushrooms, picked and dried the previous summer and fall, cooked in a special gravy on Christmas Eve morning. There was a pickled beet relish along with an eye-watering hot horseradish relish. There were pickled herrings. We ended the meal with more kutya and Christmas pastries.
During the course of the meal, we would toast each other with sweet wine. Usually, my father would raise his glass and say, “Dy Boszhe,” literally “God grant us.” We would have to put down our utensils, grab our glasses, and respond with “Pay zdorovya” or “To your health.” Nowadays you may hear it said as “pave the road” by non-speakers of Ukrainian. After the meal we would sing carols and then the older people would reminisce about the past year. There would be a minimal number of gifts under the tree. Times were rough, and gifts cost money, which was better used for daily survival. Nevertheless, this was one of the the best evenings of the year.