Intricately-decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs, or “pysanky,” have inspired hope and warded off evil for generations, and this Easter season, their sanguine energy is necessary for Ukrainian morale more than ever.
Inspired by centuries-old Ukrainian folklore, the eggs are decorated with intricate motifs and images. According to the Ukrainian National Museum, “the fate of the world depends upon the pysanka: a terrible and evil serpent who is chained to a cliff and will overrun the world if the custom of egg decorating ends.”
Meticulous techniques like “batik” wax application, and custom tools like “kistkas” are used to craft the hollow eggs every year. They are used to fill Christian homes with positivity and strength during the preparation for Easter Sunday, the actual holiday and throughout the following church season.
Junior Emily Goodpaster began learning the tradition of pysanky from her mother, Myroslava Goodpaster, when she was only 10 years old. She cherishes the many hours spent working on eggs around a huge table with family, laughter and music. The art form celebrates creativity and manifests unity within the Ukrainian household.
Emily Goodpaster shared, “One of my favorite eggs I have made depicts the tryzub, a symbol of Ukraine, on one side and a church on the other side, representing Ukraine’s strong Catholicism.” The exquisite details not only hold emotional significance, but keep stories alive.
Myroslava Goodpaster earnestly welcomes newcomers to the tradition every year and invites close friends over for parties to decorate the eggs together. As a child living in Soviet-ruled Ukraine where the church was forbidden, she and her family were stripped of celebrating all religious holidays.
She recalls the joyful day when she was 11 years old, Ukraine gained its independence and her family was finally free to celebrate Easter – with all their cherished traditions – in public again.
Watching Ukrainian freedom be dispelled again in her lifetime is heartbreaking, but this time, Myroslava Goodpaster is free to fight for justice safely from the United States by blending her Ukrainian traditions with her American community.
This spring, the Goodpasters opened their hearts and home as a workshop for Quad City families to visit and be immersed in Ukrainian culture. In the weeks leading up to and following Easter, the mother-daughter duo led numerous classes in pysanky decoration, and their impact has been incredible.
With just 10 formal sessions and a plethora of donations, they were able to raise over $6,000.
Instead of simply sending a check, though, they purchased necessary non-accessible medical supplies for the military hospital in Myroslava Goodpaster’s very own home town. A family friend of the Goodpasters traveled to Poland on April 30 and personally delivered the resources.
As co-founder of the Future Physicians of America Club at PV, Emily Goodpaster is especially proud to be making a difference in Ukrainian healthcare circumstances. “We like having this personal connection because it makes it feel more productive than donating money to bigger organizations so they can ship it somewhere in Ukraine,” she said.
Emily Goodpaster hopes to one day be a reconstructive surgeon herself, but she has clearly already excelled at helping to reconstruct communities.
Myroslava Goodpaster expresses deep gratitude at the opportunity to aid her beloved home country. “The invasion of Russia is threatening to destroy Ukrainian culture and heritage. I feel it’s my special task– even being far from Ukraine – to keep this wonderful tradition of decorating Ukrainian Easter eggs alive.”
