St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2017
A greeting for the morning of the small gift, and a note on the saint himself, who was neither Ukrainian nor a myth.
A happy St Nicholas Day to every house with a child in it.
A detail I enjoy, for reasons that will be obvious: the saint at the centre of this day was a bishop in Myra, in what is now Antalya province. He was, in the geography of today, from Turkey.
From that specific person, in that specific town, a tradition spread across Europe, mutated into several forms including the entirely commercial one, and arrived in Ukrainian households as a small parcel under a pillow.
Cultures are not sealed containers. Everything durable in one of them came from somewhere else and was made local by people who did not think of it as foreign.
A good morning to your household tomorrow.
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