RECOMMENDED READ: A Ukranian Christmas

Our recommended read shows how much this Christmas in Ukraine has in common with the very first yule…

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IN UKRAINE, Christmas comes but twice a year: December 25 and January 7. That’s because of the country’s position—often to its great cost of course—on the border between Western Europe and Russia, with their historically different calendars and historically different forms of Christianity (Western and Orthodox).

As a result, this charmingly illustrated book ranges more widely than the title might suggest, discussing customs from all across the continent, up to and including the strange British taste for Santa’s grottos in department stores. Not surprisingly, though, there’s little doubt which side of Europe the authors prefer.

As they point out, under Soviet rule Christmas was banned in Ukraine altogether. And even now that it’s back in Russia too, they clearly don’t think much of their Eastern neighbour’s Yuletide ways, where carols are barely sung and nativity plays regarded as unacceptably Western (in Ukraine, by contrast, nativity plays have long been used for political purposes, with Herod represented in former times by Stalin and these days by Putin).

Nonetheless, the book’s tone is essentially celebratory, proud of how Ukraine has blended together various Christmas influences from elsewhere, while also establishing traditions of its own. These traditions, we’re told, “are deeply rooted in the country’s history of sorrow, courage and resistance”, not least at a time that is “not so different from the very first Christmas” when Judea was under occupation by a bullying empire.