I grew up as an ordinary “Soviet” child. Of course, I loved celebrating the New Year, decorating the New Year tree and finding presents under it.

I knew almost nothing about Christmas and traditional Christmas songs because this holiday was illegal in the Soviet Union. I also knew almost nothing about the existence of the Ukrainian People's Republic, established in 1918. It was not mentioned in our Soviet history classes.

Ukraine's independence was proclaimed on August 24, 1991. 

And in 1995, in the last year of high school, I saw the cult comedy Home Alone for the first time. Perhaps, it was in this movie that I first heard the Christmas melody CAROL OF THE BELLS. It made an incredible impression on me for some reason.

Only later did I hear children singing the Ukrainian song SHCHEDRYK.

And only after that did I learn that the author of this melody was a genius Ukrainian composer, Mykola Leontovych who, throughout his life, tried to promote Ukrainian culture in his works. Leontovych's Christmas carol SHCHEDRYK is known all over the world as CAROL OF THE BELLS.

And I am sure that it was for this reason that he was killed by the Soviet secret service (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage under the RSFSR People's Commissariat - later known as the KGB). An agent asked to spend the night in Leontovych's house claiming to be a Chekist fighting against banditry, On the morning of January 23, 1921, agent Afanasii Hryshchenko robbed the house and gunned down Mykola Leontovych.

Recently I learned that Mykola Leontovych's SHCHEDRYK became well known thanks to a tour of the Ukrainian Republican Chapel of Oleksandr Koshyts, organized by Simon Petliura. He was a statesman, military and political figure of the Ukrainian People's Republic. The tour's aim was to spread Ukrainian culture around the world.

And, Simon Petliura too was murdered  by the Soviet secret services. On May 25, 1926 in Paris at two in the afternoon, Petliura stopped outside a bookstore browsing books. The Soviet agent, after asking: "Are you Petliura?" fired seven bullets.

Later in 1936 Peter Wilchousky, an American composer of Ukrainian descent, created the English text of the Christmas theme song CAROL OF THE BELLS. It is still sung and heard all over the world. In Ukraine, even my children sang it in school...

“The first step in eliminating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy their books, their culture, their history. Then instruct someone to write new books, create a new culture, invent a new history. Soon this people will begin to forget what it is and what it was... ”
Milan Kundera, “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.”

Should this happen? How can we allow Ukrainian culture and identity to be erased, again? 

Fly, our bird, carry our song far and wide on these Christmas days, tell the world about the struggle of Ukrainians for freedom!