Hello to everyone! The whole world is ready to meet Easter, the greatest Christian feast, today on Saturday Easter Eve. Easter is at the corner, and preparations are at the full speed. Velykden – that Easter sounds in Ukrainian – means “The Great Day”, and it is really so as for Christians. It is considered to be the most cheerful and festive day for the most of believers. Ukrainian ladies have done all the housework, have cleaned their houses, have baked traditional kulichi and made a lot of various pysanky and krashanky. Easter meal has been cooked in advance, and today all the believers go to churches.

The Great Sabbath, or Holy and Great Saturday, commemorates the day when Jesus Christ’s body lay in the grave, then performed the Harrowing of Hades and raised up to Paradise. Today you can hear that the Christian believers joyfully sing “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those on the tombs bestowing life!” Why cheerfully? The point is that Easter is celebrated in Ukraine since the tenth century. This holiday had been the most popular over a long period, but later this feast was forbidden to celebrate, that’s why the richest and oldest Easter folk customs and traditions in Ukraine aren’t preserved. Now the celebration of Easter had been unbanned, and this holiday is considered to be the national one.

There are many traditional Holy Saturday customs in Ukraine. All the believers go to churches to worship the “Plaschanytsya” in the late evening. It comes to Svyachinnya, the traditional blessing of Easter meal in Easter baskets. People prepare these Easter baskets in advance, and the basket usually contains kulichi, boiled eggs (pysanky or krashanky), salt, ham or sausages, butter, horseradish, cheese and a red wine of Cahors, that is believed to be used in customs. Kulichi mean Christ, meat sausages represent abundance, boiled eggs symbolize the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and horseradish means the Passion as well. The blessing of Easter basket is made on Easter morning after the Resurrection church services that lasted from the late evening till the early Easter morning.