Section
Culture & History
Food, music, literature and crafts: Ukrainian culture and the history behind it.
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From ‘Shchedryk’ to ‘Carol of the Bells’: How One Melody Became Two Songs
The melody of the Christmas standard "Carol of the Bells" comes from the Ukrainian New Year's song "Shchedryk." It crossed to North America at a Carnegie Hall concert on October 5, 1922, and gained its English lyrics in 1936 — lyrics that are not a translation of the original. Drawing on primary sources, this article traces where one melody split into two songs.
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Ukraine’s Christmas Moves from January 7 to December 25
Under a July 2023 law, Ukraine removed January 7 from its list of national holidays, leaving only December 25 as Christmas. That same September, two of the country's major churches also switched to a calendar that celebrates Christmas on December 25. This article separates the law, the church calendars, and family customs, and explains the twelve dishes of Christmas Eve and koliadky along the way.
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Vyshyvanka ── Embroidery That Differs by Region, Including a Pattern That Arrived in the Late 19th Century
The vyshyvanka, Ukraine's embroidered shirt, varies in technique and color from region to region. Among the patterns now displayed as "traditional" is a cross-stitch design that arrived from soap wrappers in the late 19th century. How far can the meanings often attached to these patterns actually be backed up by sources? This article also looks at how the vyshyvanka is treated in Ukraine's national heritage list and in UNESCO's list.
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Pysanka: The Ukrainian Wax-Written Egg, and Its 2024 UNESCO Listing
In December 2024, what was added to UNESCO's Representative List was "Pysanka, Ukrainian tradition and art of decorating eggs," a joint submission by Ukraine and Estonia. How do dictionaries and museums distinguish between these eggs? What warnings do Ukrainian researchers give about decoding "this pattern means this"? And the oldest surviving clues are not eggs at all, but 12th-century pottery.
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The Day ‘Kiev’ Became ‘Kyiv,’ and How Ukraine’s Place Names Get Their Spelling
On March 31, 2022, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs changed how it referred to Ukraine's capital, from 'Kiev' to 'Kyiv.' What changed was not the city's name, but how Київ is transliterated. This article looks in turn at the Ukrainian government resolution that sets the Latin-alphabet spelling, the #KyivNotKiev campaign, place-name changes made by law, and how older spellings are treated in historical sources.
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How Ukrainian and Russian Differ
Ukrainian and Russian both use the Cyrillic alphabet, but Ukrainian has і, ї, є, and ґ, and lacks ы, э, ъ, and ё. Differences also show up in the sound of "г," in the words for "yes" and "no," and in borrowings from Polish. Together with the history of Ukrainian being dismissed as "just a dialect" under imperial Russia, this article explains how close, and how far apart, the two languages are.