Święty wieczór w obrzędowości dorocznej Ukraińców Bojkowszczyzny: tradycja ludowa i pamięć przesiedleńców
Christmas Eve in the Ritual Calendar of Ukrainians from Boikivschyna: Folk Tradition and Deported People’s Memory

Summary/Abstract: The article presents traditional rites and customs connected with the celebration of Christmas Eve (on 6th January) in Boikivschyna, the historical-ethnographic region of modern Ukraine. The festive and ritual ceremony discussed herein adheres to the folk tradition of the celebration of Christmas Eve from the end of the 19thcentury until the 1930’s. The described ritual acts are marked by the symbolism of a “good beginning”: ritual silence during feeding chickens, feeding cattle with ritual food, and keeping some ritual scenarios that were intended to preserve and increase the farmstead. Commemorative motifs were a required part of Christmas Eve in Boikivschyna and manifested themselves in the invitation of the dead relatives to the family’s Holy Supper, in leaving ritual food after the finished supper, in the semantics of the text-rite performed by family members, and in sticking the spoon into a ritual sheaf. Such magical and ritual acts of Christmas Eve as dividing bread; strapping the table legs with a chain; and inviting the souls of dead relatives, wild animals or angels to family supper, have been found to contain symbols related to communitas. The traditional rites and magical acts practised among the inhabitants of Boikivschyna in Ukraine (described in the article) are also compared with memories of deported Ukrainians, inhabitants of western and northern voivodeships of modern Poland who lived in the Bieszczady Mountains before 1947.

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