Z novīm rokom!

I can’t believe it’s now 2014!

The last few weeks have been busy and some­what sleep­less, as they always seem to be right before the hol­i­days! But in the end it’s always worth it…

My Ukrain­ian Christ­mas with fam­i­ly was bittersweet.

This was our first Christ­mas with­out my babcha and we did not trav­el up north to cel­e­brate with our oth­er Ukrain­ian rel­a­tives. Our imme­di­ate fam­i­ly is grow­ing, and this year we ini­ti­at­ed Christ­mas at my par­ents’ house––it’s only a mat­ter of time before there is a new gen­er­a­tion crawl­ing around us all!

Since this was the first of the many Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions to come in the G House, my broth­er would chan­nel Chunk from The Goonies and say “this is our new tra­di­tion” after any­thing my mom did to pre­pare. So with the pres­sure my lit­tle broth­er placed on my mom, and the fact that she cooked 12 Ukrain­ian dish­es (that sym­bol­ized the 12 apos­tles), and orga­nized all the Ukrain­ian traditions/activities, the stress was pal­pa­ble and she earned her first marks of sainthood!

I will explain the Ukrain­ian tra­di­tions in a lat­er post (like­ly for next Christ­mas!), but I’ll leave you with one of our Ukrain­ian New Years tra­di­tions. As Christ­mas falls after New Years on the Ukrain­ian litur­gi­cal cal­en­dar, this tra­di­tion usu­al­ly takes place before Christ­mas dinner.

Before Christ­mas din­ner every­one starts the new year in a fresh way by lit­er­al­ly refresh­ing his or her face with holy water. Each per­son (from youngest to old­est) wash­es his or her face and  grabs a gold coin from the water for good luck!  Some plunge and catch the gold with their teeth, oth­ers (the ladies!) usu­al­ly just dab and hope not to smear make­up! Either way, the year starts with bright­ness and wealth!

I’ll con­tin­ue to keep you updat­ed on projects through­out 2014. ( I still have 2013 projects to post too!) I have some real­ly cool ones com­ing up too! In addi­tion to cre­ation, anoth­er res­o­lu­tion this year is learn­ing new skills and broad­en­ing my hori­zons. I hope the same for you in all your endeav­ors, and I wish you all a hap­py, safe & healthy news years!

 And, as Ukraini­ans say before toast­ing, Na zdorov’i͡a! (To good health)

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