[Note: As a Christmas gift, this week there will be two postings. So there is this one, talking about Christmas day in Kiev, and then there is the next one, which talks about what happens when you're me and you try mailing a Ukranian Penthouse. Be sure to check it out.]
It was Christmas day, the first I had ever spent without my family. I was determined not to spend it sulking.
I slept through breakfast, hoped a marchrutka to Kiev and had pizza for lunch. Susannah, a petite redhead from Montana (actually, she’s from a different state, but she asked me to protect her identity) and I went down to Kreshatic to watch the “Parade of Santas”. The final election between Yuchenko and Yannokovitch was the next day, so the tent city was still there, determined to be there until Yuchenko won.
It was against this backdrop of orange streamers and smoking wood fires in metal drums that fifty or so “Santas”, really members of a local youth organization wearing Santa robes and hats (and minus the big bellies and beards), were dancing in large circles or conga lines with children around Kreshatic avenue to Christmas music blared from a PA system. I grabbed onto the tail end of a conga line as it came past, just behind a hefty middle-aged Ukrainian woman, Susannah clinging to me. This is how the Ukrainians do Christmas.
A few hours later, we were in Maidan, and it was packed with revelers. Even thought it was 5:00 PM, it was already well into night. Just a week before, the square had been packed with Yuchenko supporters, but they had cleared out, had gone home to vote. The stage that Yuchenko gave his speeches from was still set up, but its video screens were dark, the stage empty.
The attention had been shifted to another stage across from it. This one had kids on it in sprite costumes, dancing around with people in weird animal costumes, at least one of which appeared to be a llama. Beside the stage, some fifteen stories tall, was a huge Christmas tree that, I had been informed, was actually made out of a hundred fir trees.
The sitting president and Yannokovitch-backer, Leonid Kuchma, came out to boos from the Yuchenko-supporting audience. He gave a booming speech about the goodness of Ukraine and Ukrainians, and wished everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, keeping the speech decidedly apolitical. The crowd that had booed him just minutes before applauded him and began chanting: “Molodetz! Molodetz!” something said by our Ukrainian teacher whenever we answered correctly.
They then lit up the tree and ignited the fireworks. Standing packed into a crowd between the tree and the fireworks, I couldn’t see them both things simultaneously, and had to swivel my head between the successive explosions of red and green in the sky and the flashing blue lights that swept in lines across the tree as the huge ornaments on and off. It was exactly what I came to see.
And if you wanted proof that Ukrainians know how to have a celebration, you needed to look no farther than the under-street crossing at Teatralna. On our way back to the Peace Corps office, we walked down the steps into the crossing and ran into an impromptu dance session. The music came from an accordion and two guys beating over-sized tambourines. The dancers were couples in their fifties and sixties that had happened to be crossing under the street and had stopped to dance to the music. Men in suits and ties wearing round brown fur hats and women in dresses, many wearing babushka head scarves, whirled around in a choreographed dance that reminded me of a cross between folk dancing and the ballroom dances last seen in English Cotillions.
They were obviously enjoying themselves and they were so cute to watch. They were good, too. The dance flowed as they moved in circles, the group itself moving in a larger circle, rotating as people went through the steps and twirls. After every song they broke up, walking back into the crowd. Some couples would leave, other couples would come, and then a new song would start and they’d move back into the dance circle. I grabbed Susannah and we did a little dance on the side. An old man pushing seventy came and took her from me, whirling with her on the dance floor. Susannah had no clue what to do, but the old man was sweet about it, slowly showing her the steps while she awkwardly reciprocated, grinning in embarassment
I danced a little jig alone on the edge of the circle. Just then, I felt very. very happy. It wasn't salsa dancing with my family back home, but it was close. And that's Christmas in Kiev.