On Sunday, January 7, 2010, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan (UOC-MP) Volodymyr opened this year’s Cheesefare Week festivities at Soborna Gallery.
Before the beginning of the festive events the hierarch addressed those attending and told of the traditions of the Cheesefare Week festival and wished to prepare for Lent in a good mood and in good health.
“The Cheesefare festival is a non-church feast, which the Slavonic people marked before the adoption of Christianity. They baked pancakes, which resembled the sun, tasted these pancakes, waiting for the next feast in honor of the sun. The Sun of Truth is Christ, our faith and bright hope. Therefore, through the Church the Lord did not prohibit to have fun on these days in order to gain strength for new achievements before Lent," he said.
Thereafter, the primate treated himself to a festive pancake and looked over the exhibition in the gallery and invoked God's blessing on all those present.
Everyone who came to the gallery on this frosty day had the chance to participate in various competitions, games, relays, master-classes, and other entertainment, as well as eat pancakes and drink hot tea.
The guests also had the opportunity to see the exhibition of works of artistic-applied art "Nativity Designs." Its peculiarity is in the fact that the authors of the beautiful icons, pictures, plastic art, and embroidery are prisoners.