Sviata Vechera, 2010
It’s Christmas Eve tonight in Ukraine, which means I have blood relations sitting communally around a kolach-decorated table celebrating Sviata Vechera only a time zone away. (If you’ve been following Graveyard Dirt since early December you already know that we celebrated Holy Supper on Winter Solstice’s evening.) And even though I SHOULD be in the motherfucking kitchen getting a new batch of pyrohy ready (we decided to informally observe today’s Julian calendar date as well) I thought I’d take a few minutes to share the pictures I took of the ritualized evening.
I’d be lying like a fucking dog if I didn’t admit that this was my most ambitious Holy Supper to date. A huge part of the pressure I experienced came from intimately sharing the custom with folks who read this journal; I shared, I educated and in doing so I provoked some major enthusiasm which ultimately meant I had to fucking deliver, and I had to fucking deliver spectacularly because I knew people would be watching.
Our Winter Solstice celebrations began with a total lunar eclipse, and as the rest of Scotland was rising for the day ahead both Italics and I were getting ready for bed. (We’ve spent a significant amount of November and December in nocturnal mode.) We waited until the full moon’s luminous, rounded body was swallowed by shadow, and then in that morning’s night we crawled into bed and solstice spooned ourselves to sleep. (And in doing so we actually missed ALL of the 21’s light; we went to bed in darkness, and we woke up in darkness. <- Longest night or what?)
Before we could even contemplate celebrating anything the entire house had to be cleaned, the kitchen table had to be set, the hay had to be scattered, the ancestors’ setting needed fine tuning, the animals needed to be fed, the house had to be fumigated with frankincense, we had to ritually bathe, Light needed to be brought into the house and our ancestors had to be formally invited for the ancient Midwinter feast. And until we welcomed that single flame indoors we kept the house as dark as possible - no Christmas lights were turned on, and only the most fucking crucial lamps were switched on (to their dimmest settings).
In an apron, gold earrings and crowned with traditional Slavic braids I carefully followed Italics’ slow and even pace as he lead us through the pitch black house - room by room, starting with the backroom’s open patio door and finishing at the same spot - holding a solitary candle, the tiny, burning flame our only illumination as we welcomed Light back into the house with incense and fire as the Russian Orthodox Church’s Christmas mass service played eerily in the darkened background. (Inviting our collective ancestors, relatives and friends was a little less solemn and involved carols, ringing bells and blowing through a cow horn.)
Sviata Vechera officially began with a toast of homemade plum liqueur (since Italics can’t eat wheat I performed the kutia ceremony privately with my Ukrainian ancestors), and it was when our solstice-chilled drinks clinked together (I decanted some of our homemade hooch into a fancy pants container and partially buried it in the snow on the 20th) I knew we had created something really fucking special together. Holy Supper 2010 was a tre-fucking-mendous success, and I’ve never felt more in tune with my past, present and future. It was the sort’ve experience that seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths the motion that you’re doing the right fucking thing, even if you’re essentially making up shit as you go along.