Ivana Kupala 2020

A good Kupala night.

An unexpected advantage that year. Almost every celebration in the calendar had been curtailed — indoor, seated, close together, and therefore impossible. Kupala is none of those things.

It happens outdoors, at night, near water, spread out along a riverbank, around a fire that everyone is already keeping a sensible distance from. It is, structurally, the safest festival in the year.

So while a great deal was cancelled, this one largely was not. Smaller gatherings, more of them, in more places. A festival that never needed a venue did not lose one.

The oldest layer of the calendar turned out to be the most resilient, which is roughly what I have argued about it every other year as well.