Ukrainians traditionally get up early on Easter Sunday and bring big Easter baskets to church to be blessed. Each basket is packed with symbolic foods, candles, andpysanky -- intricately decorated Easter eggs -- and covered with a white linen cloth that signifies Christ's shroud. After church, people carry their baskets home and feast on the contents for breakfast. A typical Ukrainian Easter basket contains an array of symbolic foods, including paska, or pascha, a large, round bread symbolizing the joy of new life; boiled eggs, which symbolize rebirth; and kielbasa, a spicy garlic sausage, which represents generosity.
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2/2/08
The bakset of breakfast food, ham, bread, hard boiled eggs, lamb butter, kielbasa, horseradish (I grow my own) is also a Polish tradition, Sweuncunka. On Holy Saturday is the basket blessing day at church. I also bake a lamb cake using a cast steel mold that was bought in 1940. I use a basket that my parents bought on their honeymoon in 1940, and a basket that I bought on my honeymoon 25 years ago both are covered with a embroidered cloth.
We did this growing up in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. My mother had a special embroidered cover which I now have and I still have her basket as well. It brings back warm memories. The paska, Kolbassi, hard boiled eggs, pysanky, butter in the form of a lamb, the nut and poppy seed rolls. An Orthodox Cross Candle was placed in the middle of the paska. There was beets with horseradish all grated up. Yummy. So wonderful!!