A little more for the Easter season

Sofika Zielyk, a Ukrainian-American ethnographer and artist, tells the story of pysanky, traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs.

"There is a very old pagan Ukrainian legend that as long as people are making Pysanka, the world will continue to exist. They believe that there is a monster chained up in a cave and each year he sends out his spies into the world to see if people are making Easter eggs. Now if the spies come back and say people are making eggs, they tighten the chains. But if the spies do not come back, the chains become looser. Eventually the monster will come out, and it will be the end of the world. ... Only women were allowed to make these eggs, so the fate of the world rested on women's shoulders. ..."

... "in the olden days, the eggs were not meant to be hung onto, they were meant to used in the Easter season, so they were buried in the ground, so the harvest would be better. ... that's the way these eggshells will be used symbolically to help with the rebirth of the nation. ..."