This year Ukraine has a new official holiday. On Oct. 14, the country will celebrate the Defender of Ukraine Day, which replaces the Defender of the Motherland Day, a Soviet holiday celebrated on Feb. 23.
The holiday was proposed by President Petro Poroshenko and approved by parliament on March 5.
Oct. 14 was chosen because it is one of the largest religious holidays in the Eastern Orthodox Church – the feast of Pokrov (“Protection”), also known as the feast of the Protecting Veil or Intercession of Mother of God.
Ukrainians have been celebrating Intercession of Mother of God since the 12th century, historians believe. The holiday became especially popular with the community of Ukrainian Cossacks, who were religious and celebrated Pokrov at least since the 17th century, according to Taras Chukhlib, head of the Cossack History Research Institute in the National Academy of Sciences.
“The Cossacks considered Mother of God to be their patroness,” he says. “The main church in Zaporizhzhya Sich, autonomous Cossack polity in central Ukraine, was dedicated to Our Lady Intercession.”
A few centuries later Ukrainian Insurgent Army, also known as OUN-UPA, adopted some Cossack traditions and chose the feast of Mother of God Protecting Veil to be the official day of the establishment of their army.
Ukrainian serviceman Konstyantyn Zubov, who has been fighting against Russian-separatist forces in Luhansk and Donetsk Oblast since 2014, welcomes the new official holiday but says he has neither time nor an opportunity to celebrate it this year.
“On Oct. 14 I together with my fighting brothers will be in the east. We will celebrate it modestly – tea, canned stewed meat and buckwheat gruel,” the soldier says.
Historian Chukhlib also supports the new holiday and considers it a return to Ukrainian cultural origins.
“It’s good that the president signed the law on official Intercession celebration, but the holiday has such a deep historical and cultural tradition that Ukrainians would celebrate it anyway,” he said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
