Religion

I appreciate suggestions, and so today's topic is dedicated to Adriana! :)

Religion in Ukraine is rather fascinating. The dominant religion is Eastern Orthodox- but even this is split because there are two patriarchates: the Moscow and the Kiev. The Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church is also popular and there are also a million Roman Catholics in Ukraine!

All of this is rather surprising, since really, during Soviet times, religion was rather supressed. Based on observation, I would really say that the States is a much more conservative, religious country than Ukraine.

What is also interesting are the 'minority' religious practices in Ukraine. Protestant Christians comprise about 2% of the population and there is a Pentacostal presence as well.
There are 500,000 Muslims living in Ukraine and 100,000 Jews. In downtown Odessa, we have an Arabian Cultural Center- which really is a cover name for the large Mosque in city-center and there is also a large synagogue as well.

Finally, believe it or not, there are Hare Krishnas in Ukraine! We know, because I've run into them twice! Once in Kiev, a lady kept chanting 'hare krishna' to me, and I couldn't understand her! I finally realized what she was saying (it sounded like hiyee kchna) and noticed the fact she was wearing a sari and had jappa beads. It was rather exciting.

Here, in Odessa, Arun and I actually sought out the ISKCON temple. This was harder than you think because they recently moved from their downtown location to a distant area called Sukhiya Laiman (literal translation- dry lake.) We called the Kiev temple and asked for directions- then explained to the gypsy-taxi driver in my Russian where we wanted to go... He got us to the vicinity and then got confused so we had to call the Kiev temple and put our driver on with them. Anyway, we finally got there!

Once there, we sat, listening to the lecture on Srila Prabhupad (in Russian) and realized we should probably just pray and leave quickly. It was interesting, however, to see Ukrainians keeping the religion going! They were decked out in saris and the whole thing was pretty surreal.

I'll end the topic with some rather random bit of trivia- did you know that the in Ukraine, the tradition of painting eggs (pysanky) dates back to pre-Christianity? So the origin of Easter Eggs can certainly be considered to be in Ukraine!

Secondly- did you know that Christmas, in Ukraine is celebrated on January 7th? Yup- it's celebrated AFTER New Years!
[It's according to the Gregorian calendar]

So it's only been recently that we've seen lights and trees and santas come out! I will also venture to say that the holiday is a LOT less commercialized here.
Tis the season!