Preparations for the Easter celebration in Ukraine began 40 days before the holiday – we call it the Easter fast. Seven days before Easter, the fast becomes more strict. These days you clean and prepare your home for the celebration.
On Thursday or Saturday, Ukrainian housewives bake Easter “Paskha” – traditional sweet bread and prepare pysanky and krashanky – handpainted eggs.
On Saturday night people go to churches. On Sanday, they celebrate together with families eating Paskas with eggs, meat, and sweets. Children play Easter games. People greet each other with the words “Hrystos voskres!”, which means Christ is risen!
We have an Easter legend about two brothers.
One was a rich man, another one was poor. The rich man had everything. The poor man had a small house with one window and a big family. They had nothing to eat. They didn’t even have flour to bake a Paskha.
The wife of the rich man baked many Paskhas, but they were not beautiful. One day she was passing by the poor brother’s shack and saw on the window a beautiful Paskha: gorgeous, lush, and tall.
She went to the house and proposed the poor brother’s wife to exchange all her failed Paskhas for one beautiful, and the poor woman agreed.
The poor brother’s children were happy because they had more food. The guests of the rich brother were surprised what a wonderful Paskha his wife had baked. Only when they wanted to cut it, they realized that the beautiful Paskha was made of wood.
