BelorussiaN ritual and performance “Kolyadnyie Tsari”

The article is devoted to “Kolyadnyie Tsari”, a winter holiday ritual and performance which was reconstructed in Semezhevo (Kopyl’ district, Minsk province, Republic of Belorussia). The ritual was practiced in the Belorussian village until the end of the 1960s. Because of the political climate and ideological pressure this folklore phenomenon was excluded from the authentic live folklore tradition. But the text of this performance and vivid memories of it were preserved by local villagers until today. In the beginning the 1990s the ritual was restored thanks to the efforts of Belorussian ethnographer Tatyana Kukharionok and the employees of Semezhevo House of Culture. In 2004 the ritual was included in UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage.

Every year in the evening on January 13 (the eve of Old New Year, in the Belorussian tradition this night is called “Shchedryi Vecher”, literatim the Generous Evening), several groups of young people dress up as Tsari (special characters, literatim Czars) and visit the local villagers’ yards to perform a folklore play. In response the villagers give “actors” sweets, wine and some money. On January, 13th, 2015 the authors of this article participated in this ritual and documented (by making audio and video recordings) several versions of the performance, which were acted out by the “minor” group and the “elder” group of Kolyadnyie Tsari. The analysis of the documented versions of these performances, as well as a set of interviews about the ritual given by Semezhevo citizens became the foundation of this article.

The Belorussian version of the “Kolyadnyie Tsari” ritual is doubtless a version of “King Maximilian”, a folklore drama, and is also very close to schedrovaniie (literatim “Benevolence”), the ritual of visiting houses with special greetings. The article analyzes different hypotheses of this ritual’s appearance in Semezhevo, the distinguishing features of this performance (in comparison with other versions of performing “Tsar Maximilian”), the makeup of the participants, this phenomenon’s modern context and its functions.

In the opinion of the authors of the article, this ritual-performance is a unique amalgam of one version of folklore drama and the ritual of visiting houses with greetings during the winter holidays.