Did you know Easter is the most important holiday on the church calendar in Ukraine? I found this interesting tidbit browsing through a book at the local library. The book was entitled, Ukrainian Easter Eggs.
Easter eggs or pysanka have special significance for Ukrainians.
They take great care creating them using wax, dyes, paintbrushes, and pencils. Pysanka have a long history. Since ancient times decorated eggs have been a part of Ukrainian spring rituals. Pysanka are considered beloved, even mystical objects. Ukrainians make sure the eggs used for pysanka come from hen houses with roosters. The blessings of fertility are bestowed with each gift of pysanka at Easter time.
As I leafed through this wonderful book on Ukrainian culture I thought about Easter this year in that war-ravaged country. Would there be any celebration? The task of decorating Easter eggs has traditionally been left to the women, the mothers of the family. But how many mothers are still in Ukraine? Thousands, even millions of women and children have left the country to escape Russia’s vicious assault. No doubt for many Ukrainians Easter celebrations will largely be ignored this year.
So often the cost of war is measured by casualty numbers, but war creates loss on many different levels.
Some people during war times have valiantly tried to maintain the traditions that bind them together and bring them hope. Yakov Brachfield in his YouTube video “Passover in Hell” describes the lengths his grandfather and great uncle went to celebrate Passover during the Holocaust. Though they were on the run from the Nazis, going from attic to attic, they wanted to eat matzah for Passover. They knew if they got caught they’d be shot. In the abandoned rubble of the Krakow, Poland ghetto where they hid, they found some flour and a piece of metal. They rigged together a makeshift kosher oven and baked a few small matzahs for Seder. Brachfield said that his grandfather and great-uncle discussed how Seder was a celebration of freedom. Though the Nazis could beat, torture, and kill their physical bodies, their souls would be free.
Unlike Europe and the Ukraine, American soil has never been the battle ground for a world war.
It has seen the terrible ravages of a Civil War though. I have a great, great grandfather, John Hendrick, who fought for the South during the Civil War. Sadly, there’s no record about how his Virginian family survived those war years. They were Christians and likely would have tried to observe Easter and Christ’s resurrection in some way. My mother’s middle name is “Virginia” named after her Aunt Virginia Miles. Mom has a scrap book with some of Aunt Virginia’s Easter cards sent around the time of World War I. Easter cards back then had vivid illustrations of chicks and bunnies wearing colorful bows and bonnets. I saw one postcard of a soldier with a rifle on his back holding an Easter bunny above a trench littered with pastel-colored eggs.
Our wars in modern America have been fought in faraway places like Viet Nam, Panama, and Iraq. I remember the years my son John was in the marines. Holidays were especially difficult, reminding me of better times when all of my family were together.
One holiday my son spent floating on a boat in the Red Sea trying to help people escape the impending Gulf War.
John said while he was standing watch he got seasick the boat pitched so violently. I wrote a poem expressing my fears for my marine son and read it at a coffee house. “Dear son,” I read, “be a deer, son! Be fleet of foot and run! No hero, you!”
In many cultures Easter is a celebration of life over death, spring over winter. This Easter I’m thinking of the people in Ukraine. I’m hoping for life and flowers to eventually arise from all the destruction that poor country has had to endure.