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Easter Basket Blessing by Father Hutornyj
Baskets filled with symbolic items to celebrate the Resurrection.
Both Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate) Christians celebrate Easter according to the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar. Easter is observed with various different church services during Lent and Holy Week and one of the most significant for the community is the ritual of blessing Easter baskets.
Congregants bring baskets filled with ritual foods to either Easter Saturday or Easter Sunday liturgy and they are displayed and blessed by the priest before being taken home for an Easter Sunday brunch. The basket contents include ham and sausage, cooked eggs, cheese, salt, horseradish and beet relish and a paska, a special Easter bread.
The basket is usually decorated with pysanky (specially decorated eggs with symbolic patterns) and covered with a rushnyk (embroidered ritual cloth). In good weather, the basket blessing ceremony may take place outdoors.
The first priest for the Ukrainian Orthodox community in Bradford was Father Yov Skakalskyj. Services were conducted in the church of St Mary Magdalene until 1964, when the church of St Mary the Protectoress on Stony Lane was purchased.
The largest and most active Ukrainian community in the UK diaspora thrives in Bradford.
Ukrainians have lived in Bradford since the end of the Second World War. The community was established by displaced Ukrainian men and women who came to the UK as displaced people from camps in West Germany and Austria under Westward Ho!, the European Volunteer Workers (EVWs) scheme.
In Bradford, EVWs were placed into jobs in the textile industry to fill labour shortages and were initially housed in hostels and private rented accommodation. They were joined by members of the Ukrainian Army Division who came to the UK from camps in Italy.
These early settlers founded the Bradford branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (AUGB) in 1947, established other community organisations and worshipped in both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic (Uniate) and Orthodox faiths. This collection is a snapshot of the Ukrainian community which settled in Bradford and continues to be one of the largest and most active in the UK's Ukrainian diaspora.
10 videos in this collection
Watch in libraries only
Community Meeting re. Independence Referendum Ukraine
