A year ago, Anna Sorokina and her daughter Tamila celebrated Orthodox Easter with other Ukrainian refugees in a dormitory in Prague, Czech Republic. This past Sunday, Sorokina attended an early Easter Service at Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis. Tamila slept in. The 11-year-old is a fifth grader at Forest Hills Elementary School. The two moved from Prague to Eden Prairie in October.
Among their new friends are Charlie and Lynn Speikers and the parishioners of Eden Prairie Assembly of God Church on Duck Lake Trail. “It’s a very nice community,” says Anna.
Anna met the Speikers and other Eden Prairians via NextDoor, an online social media app designed for neighborhoods. She is surprised by our town’s friendliness.
Anna Sorokina was working for a U.S.-based company in Kharkiv, her home city, when the Russian Invasion began in February 2022. Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis is 26 miles from the Russian border in eastern Ukraine.
At the start of the war, Anna learned that the parents of her American friend Danielle could possibly help her and her daughter get to the United States. They did. In October, Lorinda Fraboni and Doug Schlauderaff opened their home near Miller Park to Anna and Tamila.
Two months later, Karen and Scott Pederson and other new Eden Prairie friends helped with their next transition. “Before I rented my apartment, I needed furniture,” says Anna. “People came by, dropped off things for us, even presents for my daughter. … There are a lot of nice people here, so we are very blessed to have them around.”
This year, Ukrainian Orthodox Easter falls on Sunday, April 16. Because Ukraine remains under martial law, the State’s Easter/Monday Holiday will again be suspended.
During Anna’s and Tamila’s journey to Eden Prairie, Russian forces were making destructive advances with heavy combatant and civilian fatalities in Kharkiv Oblast (district). Ukraine forces have regained control of sorts. Russian missile strikes continue. Anna Sorokina’s family, her brother and parents, remain in Kharkiv.
Христос воскрес! Воістину воскрес!
During a phone interview last week, Anna said she was looking forward to Easter in Minnesota and would be preparing and sharing Ukrainian Easter cakes (páska or kulich) and spiced wine with friends. She and her daughter would also color Easter eggs, but not the celebrated Ukrainian pysanky eggs. Those can take days to decorate and are not for eating.
But Anna is teaching her new American friends a Ukrainian Orthodox Easter greeting: “When you meet someone, you say, ‘Christ is Risen! and you kiss them three times on the cheeks,” she said. “And the answer to that is, ‘Truly He is Risen!’
Note: The Ukrainian Cyrillic spelling is: Христос воскрес! Воістину воскрес!
Palm Sunday in Northeast Minneapolis
St. Michael’s and St. George’s Church in Northeast Minneapolis hosts an annual Easter Egg Bake sale after Palm Sunday Orthodox services. This year, hundreds of folks negotiated past snow-melt ponding on local streets to the parish’s annex and the promise of spring and Easter goodies.
They were greeted by Helen Chorolec and Lasya Lucyk, both wearing traditional dresses and gleaming smiles. They handed shoppers a price list of items and told them where to find them in a bazaar of tabletop baked goods, embroideries, ceramics, tote bags, T-shirts, signs and lapel pins.
Intricate, hand-painted pysanky eggs ranging in price from $10 to $50 were carefully inspected by folks who are buying into tradition.
Parish member Stefanie Mulrooney was clerking one of the egg tables. Thanks to her grandmother, who migrated from Ukraine in the late 1950s, Stefanie has been painting pysanky since she was 4. None of her pysanky eggs, she confessed, were on display on Palm Sunday. She chuckled and explained, “I didn’t have time to make as many this year because I also have this 5 year old here.”
Nearby, Allyson Luba Perchyshyn said that she has also learned the art of pysanky from her grandmother. Back in 1947, Allyson’s family started a business in their Northeast Minneapolis living room. The Ukrainian Gift Shop, 76 years later, is still in business. It operates these days at 1005 North 5th St. near Target Field but has also become a popular online store. The shop’s website announces that it has become the world’s largest family-owned supplier of pysanky and pysanky decorating tools, dyes, beeswax, books and traditional patterns.
The pysanky design process begins with an unboiled egg with a strong shell. Melted beeswax is applied to the eggshell with a pencil-like device called a kistka. Attached to one end of the kistka is a small funnel for the liquid wax. Once a pattern is drawn and the wax hardens, the egg is dunked in a light-colored dye. This stage is repeated with new design elements and increasingly dark-colored dyes. Finally, the wax layers that protect each corresponding layer of color are melted with a candle.
Pysanky designs and colors carry significant symbolic meanings, ranging from simple to intricate. For example, the sun represents the love of God, pine needles symbolize eternal life, and diamonds represent knowledge. Additionally, white signifies purity, blue signifies fidelity, and red signifies happiness. There are scores of pysanky tutorials on the internet, but the Ukrainian Gift Shop website provides an easy-to-follow pysanky primer.
The Palm Sunday customers at St. Michael’s and St. George’s Church carefully considered their options as they moved from station to station with egg cartons to hold their stunning selections. Proceeds are dedicated to church and Ukraine aid programs.
In the world of art, a $50 pysanky egg is a bargain.
More about Ukrainian Orthodox Easter
Anna Sorokina told EPLN about other Ukrainian Orthodox traditions like the 40-day fast during Lent with no meat and little dairy and the confession of sins in church every Sunday.
And, explained Anna, each day of Easter Week has its own tradition. For example, Thursday is “Clean Thursday.” Before the sun rises, you take a shower or a bath to symbolize washing away your sins. Another is blessing salt, which is then saved for the coming year. “If you have quarrels,” Anna said, “you can put salt on the table or under the door, and it will help to prevent more quarrels.”
After Easter Sunday services, Ukrainian Easter baskets stocked with páska or kulich breads, hard-boiled eggs, salt, horseradish, cheese, ham, kielbasa, butter and decorated pysanky eggs are blessed. The blessed food is then shared with friends and other families.
Anna also talked about an Easter food basket custom that was revived with the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, when Ukraine and other former republics were very poor.
After Easter services, Ukrainian Orthodox families visit the graves of their loved ones. “They eat their Easter lunch [in the cemetery]and then they leave the kulich (frosted Easter bread), eggs, and candy on the graves. Then kids can come and take it.”
Anna and Tamila Sorokina hope to return to Ukraine in two years.
Editor’s note: Reporter Juliana Allen contributed to this story. Writer Jeff Strate is a founding member of the EPLN Board of Directors.
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