Masked Youths Go House to House on the Eve of Saint Melania’s Day: Ukraine’s “Malanka”

“Malanka” (Маланка) is a Ukrainian folk custom in which young people dress up and go from house to house on the eve of the new year. The University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) describes Malanka as a folk festival for New Year’s Eve, corresponding on the Latin church calendar to the feast of Saint Sylvester, with the name coming from Saint Melania (Melaniia), whose day falls on January 13 in the civil calendar and December 31 in the old (Julian) calendar. This is a reprint of an entry published on paper in 1993.

As of September 2026, Ukraine’s national inventory of intangible cultural heritage lists three entries related to Malanka and “Bountiful Evening.” This article goes through what the custom involves, why the date splits into two, and what is recorded in the inventory. The carols sung the same evening (щедрівки, shchedrivky) are covered in our article on “Shchedryk”, and the 2023 change to the church calendar in our article on Ukrainian Christmas.

Malanka in Women’s Clothes, and a Band of Goats

IEU’s “Malanka” entry states that traditionally, an unmarried young man dressed in women’s clothing became “Malanka,” and, together with characters such as someone costumed as a goat, an old man, an old woman, a Roma person, or a Jewish person, and musicians, went from house to house in the village. Visiting houses under the pretext of “tidying up,” the group actually played various pranks. In some places, young men and women brought a plow into the house and mimed plowing a field. This folk drama was rounded off with carols.

The same entry states that the Malanka tradition combines an old agrarian theme with folk theatrical forms such as interludes and the puppet nativity play vertep. Vertep is covered in our article on vertep.

IEU’s “Koza” (goat) entry describes a folk drama in which a young man costumed as a goat goes from house to house performing a dance wishing for a good harvest, and states that the goat could be accompanied by figures costumed as an old man, a Roma person, a bear, and others, along with Malanka, the “New Year’s Eve girl.” IEU’s “New Year” entry lists, among the main New Year’s Eve rituals, eating kutia (wheat porridge), children’s carols, bringing livestock into the house (“poraz”), fortune-telling, mimed sowing of wheat, and “going around the village with Malanka.”

Malanka, Bountiful Evening, Bountiful Kutia

What this evening is called varies by region. IEU states that in central and eastern Ukraine, this festival is also called “Щедрий вечір” (Shchedryi vechir, Bountiful Evening) or “Щедра кутя” (Shchedra kutia, Bountiful Kutia). There is also a form of the festival’s name, “Melanka” (Меланка). Ukraine’s national encyclopedia, Велика українська енциклопедія (Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia, “VUE” below), defines “Bountiful Evening” as the evening before Saint Vasyl’s Day on January 13, part of the series of Christmas and New Year celebrations.

Saint Melania’s Day and Saint Vasyl’s Day

The day after Malanka’s evening is the feast of Saint Vasyl (Basil the Great). The Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s (OCU) 2026 church calendar commemorates Saint Melania of Rome on December 31, and the “Circumcision of the Lord” and Basil the Great on January 1.

Until 2023, the OCU and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) counted feast days by the Julian calendar, so Saint Melania’s Day, corresponding to the old calendar’s December 31, fell on January 13 in the civil calendar. The two churches decided to celebrate fixed-date feast days on the new calendar from September 1, 2023, and on the church calendar Saint Melania’s Day became December 31. This is why IEU’s “New Year” entry (1993) states that Ukrainians celebrate the new year twice — the official new year on January 1, and an unofficial new year on January 14 (New Year’s Day by the old calendar) — reflecting this gap between calendars.

The Evening of December 31, or the Evening of January 13?

Even after the church calendar changed, sources differ on which evening Malanka is held.

• The Ukrainian Center for Cultural Research (a body under the Ministry of Culture) describes its inventory entry “the Bukovyna Malanka” as a tradition, with the character of a carnival, whose purpose is “to act out everything frightening and everything comic in a single night (December 31 or January 13) before entering the new year.”
• The same center states that for the Malanka of the village of Bileluia, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, participants gather on the morning of “the eve of the old-calendar new year, January 13,” at the house of the person playing Malanka, and begin parading through the village streets.
• VUE’s entry for “Bountiful Evening” defines it as the evening of January 13.
• On OCU’s 2026 church calendar, Saint Melania’s Day is December 31.

The two churches’ decisions revised the liturgical calendar; they did not set the date for village or town festivities. The two dates are not so much one right and one wrong, as they are an expression of the difference in how the calendar is counted.

Three Entries in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Ukraine’s National Inventory of Elements of Intangible Cultural Heritage (Національний перелік елементів нематеріальної культурної спадщини України) is a list to which the Ministry of Culture adds entries by ministerial order. As of the June 2026 edition, three entries relate to Malanka and “Bountiful Evening.”

The 2022 order, on the recommendation of the inventory’s expert council, asked that a protection plan for 1 to 5 years be drawn up by September 15, 2022 for the Bukovyna Malanka, broadly involving the communities and interested organizations and individuals who carry the tradition, and that a survey of the handicrafts involved in the custom be planned. The Ukrainian Center for Cultural Research explains that the “Bountiful Evening” tradition has a long history reaching back before Christianity, is celebrated on the eve of the new year by going from house to house, and has been believed to bring a better life in the coming year the more bountifully it is celebrated.

Whose Custom Is Malanka?

Sources also differ on how widely the custom is practiced. IEU (1993) states that the Malanka tradition “was most widely practiced in the Dnipro River basin.” Meanwhile, the entries individually listed in the national inventory are the customs of western Bukovyna (Chernivtsi Oblast) and the Prykarpattia region (Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast). The “Bountiful Evening” entry, by contrast, covers all of Ukraine without regional limitation. Which oblast the region name Bukovyna corresponds to is covered in our article on regional names distinct from oblast names.

A Timeline of Malanka and “Bountiful Evening”

IEU’s “New Year” entry also states that the Soviet authorities regarded traditional New Year rituals as part of religion and banned them, and that these rituals came to be kept within the family. Meanwhile, the same encyclopedia’s “Malanka” entry states that Malanka was revived as part of New Year celebrations in the early 1930s — the two entries’ accounts do not fully match.