Celebrating Christmas with Ukrainian Women

Discover what it’s like to celebrate the Yuletide season with Ukrainian women.

For most countries, Christmas is a time-honored tradition that many people anticipate. In the United States, for example, where the buzz of the Yuletide season reaches its peak around the third week of December, people start putting up their decorations as early as the first week.

There are also places that start their celebrations around late November, lasting until early January. But if you’re traveling to Ukraine to meet, date, and marry Ukrainian women during the winter season, you’re in for a pleasant surprise: this Eastern European country celebrates Christmas twice!

Yes, you read that right. But that’s not the only unique thing about how Ukrainian girls celebrate the Ukrainian Christmas season. Here are some more interesting details that you might be amazed to know:

Yes, Ukrainian Women celebrate Christmas twice.

Whether to meet beautiful Ukrainian women or to explore the charming country, you can enjoy your typical Yuletide celebrations. Ukrainian Christmas dinner on the eve of Christmas Day and the opening of presents the morning after.

In the next month, however, on January 7, when you have yet to recover from all those New Year’s Eve parties you attended, you get to celebrate Christmas again with your Ukrainian hosts.

The reason for this peculiar tradition is the fact that the Eastern Orthodox Church of Ukraine follows the Julian calendar, which lags behind the Gregorian calendar by approximately 13 days.

Recently, Ukrainian lawmakers voted to make the 25th of December an official public holiday, aside from the traditionally celebrated January 7. This means that since 2017, Ukrainians have celebrated Christmas twice every year. Talk about being full of the Christmas spirit!

Women in Ukraine Celebrate Christmas with Passion

Even if it’s your first time experiencing a Ukraine Christmas, you’ll immediately get the feeling that Ukrainians have a more traditional way of celebrating it compared to the rest of the world.

In the United States, for example, images of Santa Claus and red-nosed reindeer abound in many commercial establishments and malls. One might even conclude that the holiday itself has been so commercialized to the point that the original reason for its celebration has been forgotten.

That is not the case in Ukraine.

Your special Ukrainian woman, that is if you’ve already met one, will tell you that for the people in her home country, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ. The spirit of the celebration is not so much about commercialism, but about Christ Himself and His coming into the world.

In Ukraine, shop displays exhibit Nativity scenes, and people there greet each other with “Christ is born” and “Glorify Him.”

They have exciting Christmas traditions that are truly unique.

If you’re traveling to Ukraine with thoughts of marrying a Ukrainian woman, the Yuletide season is the best time to be there.

The winter season is particularly cold, reaching temperatures as low as -20 degrees Celsius. The freezing weather makes it a perfect time to have cozy indoor dates with your lady and to participate in the country’s unique Christmas traditions.

One such tradition is the Ukrainian family Christmas dinner, which offers a 12-dish course of vegetarian meals. While no meat or fat is allowed at this festivity, the dishes are no less rich and sumptuous.

The dinner itself is the culmination of a 40-day fasting period, which Ukrainians call the Fast of Phillip. A family or gathering of people sit at a table when the first star shows up in the sky. The table’s corners are adorned with a clove of garlic (for protection from evil) and a nut (for strength).

The “superstar” of this dinner is a grain dish called “kutya.”

As this is brought to the table, a spoonful is taken and then tossed to the ceiling; the quantity of grains that stick to the surface are said to predict the next harvest’s outcome. In urban places and non-agricultural families, this foretold the fortunes of households for the coming year.

Caroling is still a well-loved tradition.

If you’re a conservative guy looking for traditional Ukrainian women for marriage, you can find the best options in the countryside. Women there are more prudent than their more liberated, urban counterparts.

It’s the same thing if you’re looking for a truly conventional Christmas celebration — you should head to the countryside to find it.

This is especially true if you’re looking for age-old traditions like caroling and Nativity plays. In rural villages, you can find groups of people in colorful traditional costumes wandering and singing joyous carols. They are also known for putting on elaborate plays, called “verteps,” which typically portray the Nativity scene.

They have a different gift-giving custom.

As previously mentioned, compared to the United States and other Western countries, Ukraine’s tradition is less of a commercialized holiday and more of a simple and sincere commemoration of Jesus Christ’s birth.

Unlike the rest of the world, which exchanges gifts on December 25, Ukrainian families do so a bit earlier: on the feast day of Saint Nicholas, which usually falls on December 6.

However, in recent years, Western traditions have also ingrained themselves into many modern Ukrainian families as they have also taken to giving gifts on the 25th. However, the main purpose of their gift-giving has never been about the gifts themselves, but about highlighting the joyous attitude of giving.

Celebrating Christmas Differently in Ukraine

If you were to walk around any town in Ukraine and ask the locals you meet as to which holiday they consider the most significant, the answer would be almost, if not totally, unanimous: Christmas.

For them, it’s a religious holiday that they strictly observe. Their Yuletide customs showcase their devotion to Jesus Christ and the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. Celebrating also indicates the kind of people Ukrainian women are at their core. Religious, traditional, down-to-earth, faithful, and devoted to the things and people they love and believe in.