KYIV. UOC Primate Opened This-Year Cheesefare Week Festivities

On Sunday, January 7, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine called to the construction site of Resurrection Cathedral of the UOC (Zaliznychne shosse, 3), where he opened this-year Cheesefare Week festivities at Soborna Gallery.   

Before the beginning of the festive events the Archpastor addressed those attending and told of the traditions of the Cheesefare Week festival and wished to get ready for Lent in good mood and health.  

«Cheesefare festival is a non-church feast, which the Slavonic people marked before the adoption of Christianity.  They baked pancakes, which resembled the sun, tasted these pancakes, waiting for the next feast in honor of the sun.   The Sun of Truth is Christ, the Sun of Truth is our faith, the Sun of Truth is our unshadowed hope. Therefore through the Church the Lord did not prohibit to have fun these days in order to gain strength for the new achievements before Lent", he said.

Thereafter the Primate treated himself to the festive pancake and looked over the exposition of the exhibition center, the playgrounds and competition sites, and invoked God's blessing on all those present.   

Everyone willing, who called to the gallery on this frosty day, could take part in various competitions, games, relays, master-classes and other entertainments and in the traditional treating to pancakes and hot tea.

 Also the guests could get acquainted themselves with the exhibition of the works  of artistic-applied art "Nativity designs". Its peculiarity is in the fact that the authors of the beautiful icons, pictures, plastic art and embroidery are the convicts staying in the places of confinement.