Sunday July 6 was a night when Ukrainians forgot they lived in the 20th century.
Maidens, white-robed and flower-crowned, danced round a tree decorated with candles and marigolds, accompanied by thin piping and simple folk songs. As the sun set, young couples lined up handin-hand to jump over a blazing fire. An aura of pagan beauty touched everyone; girls were transformed by their sunburst wreaths of flowers into mysterious, alluring creatures of the forest, while flames lit up a wildness in expectant faces.
Pirogova open-air museum did more than commemorate folk architecture and costumes that night: it brought to life the ancient midsummer festival of Ivana Kupala. By the time dusk fell and the fire was lit, the celebration was generating its own momentum, with a burning wheel rolled down into a lake leaving behind a flaming trail. What had started as a simple re-enactment of a long-dead tradition proved to touch a chord in the Ukrainian soul.
Our parents celebrated Ivana Kupala … and I hope our children will celebrate it too, said Luda Trifonenko, 40, a member of a folklore ensemble from a village near Kyiv.
The preponderance of young people in the willow-fringed meadow seemed to back up her hope.
Its a festival of youth and nature, said Olga Lukyanenko, from the Vinnitsa region. It symbolizes the union of water and fire, the sun and water.
According to Lukyanenko, the festivals name comes from the marriage of pagan customs with Christianity. Kupala has its roots in a god of the ancient Tripilye culture. Ivan is the Christian Saint John the Baptist, whose feast day Latin-rite Christians celebrate two weeks earlier on June 23.
Ivana Kupala is primarily a festival for young women. Girls float their flower wreaths on the water in order to seek out their future husbands, who find the wreaths.
Each girl hopes he will come here and put the wreath on her head, and she will find out about her fianc^ I, said Trifonenko.
However, others on hand said that originally the festival was far less respectable. When a girl found the man who had retrieved her wreath from the water, together they headed not for the alter but for the privacy of the forest.
They didnt have to marry. Couples could try each other for a while to see if they could live together, Lukyanenko explained. She said that after the festival, traditionally a girl was free to live with whoever she had chosen, whatever her parents thought.
The couples leaping over the fire shed their modernity, running and flying through flames just as their ancestors might have done. But most seemed unimpressed by the significance of what they were doing. The action traditionally signifies a lasting happy relationship as binding as a marriage in church, said bystanders.
No one actually believes in it, said one young Kyivite, returning to the line to jump again.
Most of the wreaths floating on the water were still unclaimed by the end of the evening, perhaps thanks to a shortage of young men. As midnight approached, the crowd melted away, but whether into thickets or towards waiting buses was impossible to tell.
