Photo: kateryna kit-sadova
This year, Lviv is decorated with Christmas spiders for the period of the Christmas holidays. This is an element of the new concept of decorating the city for Christmas, according to the Lviv City Council. The «павук» [pavuk, or spider] is a traditional decoration, abstractly representing a spider, seen in Ukrainian homes during Christmas, which formerly begins here with Christmas Eve on 6 January, according to the old-style Julian calendar.
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As Ukrainian researcher Yaryna Vynnytska explains in her book «The School of Christmas,» earlier, it was believed that spiders founded the world and later, they wove a web to cover the entrance to the cave where Mary hid with her child and thus saved small Jesus from Herod. Therefore, these insects have always been welcome guests in the house, hence the belief that if someone kills a spider, it will cause him trouble.
Before Christmas, Ukrainian homes were decorated with straw spiders: on a long hair from the tail of a horse, they were attached to the central svolok (main beam under the ceiling in a traditional Ukrainian house of wood). Such a spider is similar to a 3D model of the universe.
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We will recall that a new concept of city lighting was developed in Lviv for the Christmas holiday – read what makes the Christmas tree special this year. Namely, the Christmas tree was decorated with diamonds, which are symbols of the family’s strength, and Christmas spiders appeared in the central part of the city, which earlier, some Ukrainian families hung in their homes.
Translated by Vitalii Holich
You can read a Ukrainian language version of this story here.
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