My apologies to anyone who is glad that the Christmas season is finally in the past; however, …

Orthodox and Eastern Rite Churches still use the Julian calendar for Ecclesiastic purposes; consequently, January 6 is Ukrainian Christmas Eve.

Paying due respects to a portion of my wife’s genetic makeup, I’m going to try — once more — to start a family tradition by presenting gifts from Svyatyi Mykolai* (Saint Nicolas) tonight.

Perhaps one of these years we’ll even have a traditional twelve dish Christmas Eve dinner (Sviaty Vechir*).  Afterward, we can take a songbook of Ukrainian carols outside and regale the neighbours with some koliadky.*

*There are various spellings for these words; apparently, Ukrainian pronunciations don’t necessarily translate perfectly into English.