Ancient folk tradition with contemporary trappings

The scenario for successfully celebrating the summer solstice suffices to disprove all notions that extreme amusements are a product of Western thinking. Slavs have a need for adrenaline in their blood. Is this not a folk extreme of a kind — jumping over the high flame of a campfire, thus reaching close unity with nature and asking it to charm your family’s happiness or searching for fern flowers at midnight when evil spirits are at their peak. Is this not a game of survival?

However, looking at the way Ukrainians celebrate Kupala these days (for instance in Pyrohove on Saturday night), our ancestors would probably be slightly surprised with how ancient traditions are embroidered by contemporary additions. Then the young generation seemed most brave, jumping across the fire, while their parents devoted themselves to comestibles and libations. However, soon they also joined their offspring. Jumping across the fire, everybody seemed to forget that you should do this together with your better half, for otherwise the magic will not work. Dramatic events seemed indispensable: somebody almost dropped his mobile phone into the fire. The organizers kept adding wood to the fire, and by the end of the night the line to the attraction was several meters long.

Then it was time for the major amusement for unmarried young girls. Long before nightfall almost every female visitor of the Pyrohove preserve had made herself a garland. Some of them could as well be displayed at a floral exhibition. Late at night the garlands were floating in the lake with lighted candles affixed to them.

It is worth mentioning that the celebration was organized in accordance with the classic scenarios described in detail by ethnography textbooks. There was a Kupala tree decorated with colored rags. Under it, according to tradition, a Yaryla straw doll was placed, to later be burned in the fire. However, the trees did not walk, and there were no parades of brownies, wood goblins, or mermaids. Maybe it was the lack of mystical atmosphere that dispelled the traditional fear of swimming on this day. There were some willing to refresh themselves in the lake’s cool water on that Saturday night in Pyrohove, who ignored the Ministry of Emergency Situations’ repeated warnings referring to the bitter statistics of the previous year’s Kupala festivities: 52 persons drowned last year alone.