Gavėnia - Lent
Written by J. Birutė Litvinas, National Lithuanian Affairs, Culture & Language Chair (C-72, Binghamton, NY)
Christians all over the world on March 5, 2025, begin the practice of 40 days of prayer, fasting, and giving, known as Lent, in preparation for Easter Sunday. In 601 AD, Pope Gregory established this tradition and the tradition of marking with ashes people‘s foreheads in the cross. The start of Lent on Ash Wednesday dictated very strict fasting rules: only one meal a day was allowed; meat, milk products, eggs were forbidden.
Since Lithuania was the last country in Europe to embrace Christianity in 1387, much of Lent has a historical, archaic layer showing the nation’s lyrical character intertwined with the new faith. Even the word for Lent, Gavėnia, is the name of God‘s emissary from the Old Religion who looked after the flax turning into linen.
These last nine days Lent, Gavėnia, start with Verbinės, Palm Sunday, celebrating Jesus’ humble entry on a donkey into Jerusalem to observe Passover. According to the gospel account, He is greeted by crowds, who spread their cloaks and lay palm leaves in His path proclaiming Him Son of David.
On this day, Verbinės, Lithuanians awaken their family members very early in the morning with a switch, verba, made of juniper and pussy willows hitting them to wish good health and happiness in the coming year. This custom is older than Christianity and a very unique part of Lithuanian culture whose ancestors believed in the sacredness of nature. The pussy willow, the first to come to life after a harsh winter, and juniper, green all winter, was believed to give a person who was touched with it the energy of the reborn Spring.
This ritual of the verba is very important. On Verbų Sunday everyone tries to be the first to awake to give a good thrashing with the verba to those still in bed by saying the magical words:
Ne aš mušu, / It is not I hitting you,
Verba muša, / It is the verba,
Linkiu tau sveikam būti / I wish you health
Visus metus / All of next year.
Even today on Palm Sunday the Churches are packed with every person holding a verba in his hand. Coming out of church, not only the adults but, also, children, lash each other with the verba to reawaken Nature.
Also, everyone knows that if he comes to church without carrying the verba, he will find himself holding the devil‘s tail in his hand.
Maundy Thursday, Didysis Ketvirtadienis, is when the Pope washes the feet of 12 humble persons in imitation of Jesus’ washing the feet of His 12 disciples before the Last Supper. In Lithuania the day is called Švarusis Ketvirtadienis, Clean Thursday.
Everything in the house must be washed; floors, bedding, clothes, windows, plants repotted. The windows are opened to let in the first sun after a harsh winter so that everyone would feel it’s warmth. Mistletoe and cranberry sprigs are brought into the house to be placed on the Easter table. Easter bread is baked today, and because this day is the start of Juodasis Pasnikas, Black Fast, much is needed because until Easter Sunday only bread and water is allowed.
Good Friday, Didysis Penktadienis, commemorates the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. In Lithuania this day is called Vėlių Velykėlės because the belief is that on this day ancestors, vėlės, are allowed to leave Dausos, the place where they live with Dievas, God, and return to earth.
On this day grandparents take their grandchildren to visit cemeteries. It is a very important cultural belief in Lithuania that the children must know their ancestors, their stories, and where they are resting.
Holy Saturday, Didysis Šestadienis, is the traditional end of Lent. In Lithuania this is the day to bring back holy water and holy fire, Velykinės Ugnies, from the bonfires in front of the Church. In the olden days the old hearth was doused and a new life started with the new fire. Food for Easter morning could only be cooked with this new fire. To this day every event, every celebration in Lithuania starts with a bonfire. The Teutonic Knights called the Balts, “The Worshipers of Fire.” The sauna is, also, lit with this new fire and the day is spent coloring the Easter eggs.
After 40 days of fasting, Velykos, Easter Sunday, is magical with the table laden with šaltiena, head cheese, kepta kiauliena, pork, kumpis, ham, sūris, cheese, Velykinis pyragas, babka. And, of course, margučiai, colored eggs, in colors representing the earth: brown, red, black, etched with ancient symbols of the sun, and stars, žaltys, the snake, reborn every spring, and birds’ feet, to thank the winged visitors for returning each year from foreign lands.
Bringing Lithuania in Your Heart
Written by J. Birutė Litvinas, National Lithuanian Affairs, Culture & Language Chair (C-72, Binghamton, NY)
The Lithuanian poet, Jonas Aistis, finding himself in exile, recounts in one of his poems the moment his mother was saying goodbye to his older brother before sending him overseas. He remembers how his mother, having sewed few grains of heather from their fields into a scapular, placed it around his neck and asked:
“How much heather will be enough next to your heart to remember us when you are gone beyond the seas.”
Argi daug šilainės škaplėriun paimsi? Argi ten, už mariu, bus tau jos gana?
Aistis writes about the sorrow that, in one way or another, someone in our family has experienced. And, since the conversation traditionally at the Kūčiu table centers on our family, our ancestors: at Kūčiu table we cannot but ask who they were, those loved ones who no longer are with us? what were their lives like? what can we learn from the journey they lived? Sitting at the Kūčiu table this year, we, the descendants of those parents or grandparents or great grandparents who left Lithuania, their homes, their loved ones, carrying the few grains of earth or dried bread sown into the scapular by their mothers, can’t help but remember someone who crossed the seas wearing a scapular next to his heart.
The first massive emigration from Lithuania to the US was in 1868. Lithuania, then, had been erased from the world map. Most of those who left tried to escape the Tzarist government’s conscription into its army lasting a lifetime. There were no green cards. All, as all other nationalities, entered the US illegally, many through Ellis Island. It has been recorded that in 1889 5,291 men and 1,567 women entered from Lithuania. Their courage and daring are incomprehensible for us. They had to cross the Lithuanian-German border, guarded by Tzarist “žandarms,” paying smugglers to buy off the guards; cross most of Germany to Hamburg or other ports without knowing a word of the German language; find transportation; accommodations; food for the journey. Finally, they crossed the Atlantic Ocean lying on decks. The food they brought soon disappeared. How much dried bread and dried cheese can one carry from home? By the end of the trip, starving, they walked the streets of New York City hoping to meet someone speaking Lithuanian so they could be told how to reach the Shenandoah mines, or the meat packing plants in Chicago.
But they came carrying that scapular Aistis talks about near their heart. Today’s Lithuanian Independence would have been impossible without them. They built Lithuanian churches, published Lithuanian newspapers, books, established Lithuanian organizations, and sent one dollar of the seven dollars they earned each week to Lithuania. Between 1895 and 1904 one bank in Chicago sent to Lithuania 4 million dollars in donations. 85 million in today’s currency. There were 12 such banks in Chicago. We are not even counting the banks in the rest of the country! St. George’s Lithuanian Parish of Rochester, NY, bought a plane. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson declared November 1, Lithuania Day, after receiving 1 million signatures asking him to do so. On that day, the whole of the USA collected money for Lithuania’s reconstruction.
Only in 1921 was the strict quota for immigration enacted in USA; only wives, children and parents of those living here could enter. That year only 2,310 Lithuanians were allowed in. With the doors to US closed, Lithuanians went to South America. Agents in Lithuania offered them free transportation, but upon arrival they discovered they were indentured servants made to work off their passage money to plantation owners who charged them for lodging, food and worked them in slave conditions. But, here, too, they did everything to safeguard their unique Lithuanian traditions by building parishes, schools, sending their children to universities. It is most heartwarming to meet the third, fourth generation of young people, whose Lithuanian ancestors settled in South America, coming back to Lithuania’s Song and Dance Festivals wearing Lithuanian traditional costumes and speaking Lithuanian in that beautiful, lilting Spanish dialect.
In 1949, after five years in refugee camps, Political Refugees were allowed to come to this country: displaced persons, they were called DPs. But they renamed themselves after the two letters D and P into Diego Paukšteliai: God’s small birds. When the Russians had returned to Lithuania in 1944, every Lithuanian remembering the Soviet deportations of 1941, tried to leave the country ahead of the Soviet armies: walking on top of trains, by horse drawn buggies. Experiencing shootings, bombs, the Soviets on their heels, they came to West only to be promptly taken by the German war machine to work in factories, to dig fox holes, to prison. After the war ended, they were herded into refugee camps in abandoned German soldier’s barracks wearing the clothes they wore leaving Lithuania, with little food, the camps constantly raided by Russian soldiers looking to send them home. But they, wearing that scapular next to their hearts, longing to return home when the war ended, established Lithuanian schools, a university, published 600 periodicals, 800 non-periodicals, newspapers, books, set up choirs, folk dance groups, sport teams, theaters, organizations. When the 1949 Immigration Law for World War II refugees was enacted: 60,000 Lithuanians, who had never believed they would not be able to go home, had to decide where they could find a place to live. Those who had someone to promise housing and a job, were allowed into US; the others went to Canada to cut forest, to Australia, Brazil, Venezuela to work the land. Most were over-educated working at manual labor, but their goals were the same as those who came to this country before them: freedom for Lithuania, preservation of its language and culture, education for their children.
When 1991 Lithuania restored its Independence, the prison doors opened. Many Lithuanians, winning the Green Card, a lottery, came to the US; others, coming here legally, stayed. They had many, many reasons: economical, “to look around the world,” to become a “global citizen” but, they too, brought with them that piece of Lithuanian earth in their hearts. Today, there are 36 countries with a chapter of the Lithuanian Community, whose primary task is to safeguard Lithuania’s language and culture. There are 4.2 million outside of Lithuania who count ourselves Lithuanian. Some of those 4.2 million will be celebrating Kūčios, waiting for the Birth of the Christ Child to take away the darkness from our lives. We gather to celebrate Kūčios because our ancestors instilled in us what they, themselves, had etched in their hearts. May the burning candles on our tables, the Sacred Plotkelės, the twelve dishes, the empty chair remind us that no matter how much our family’s Kūčios have its own traditions, and we have adapted to the place we live, we are the descendants of those who, wearing that scapular with grains of the sacred bread, guarded and instilled in us as our unique, mystical, and sacred traditions.
Kūčios
Written by J. Birutė Litvinas, National Lithuanian Affairs, Culture & Language Chair (C-72, Binghamton, NY)
For us, Lithuanians, whose ancestors have lived near the Baltic Sea for more than eight thousand years, believe the birth of Christ, who speak a language, which linguists have determined is the oldest and purest surviving proto-Indo-European language, as archaic as Sanskrit, the miracle of Kūčios intertwines thousands of years of tradition with the birth of the Christ Child. Because Lithuania was the last country in Europe, accepting Christianity only in 1387, our “adventus,” the Latin word for preparation, as does the Greek word, “parousia,” and the Lithuanian word “pasiruošimas,” preparation, meant that as an agrarian nation living closely with nature, thousands of years before Christianity, before the Winter Solstice, we made preparations to welcome the Sun who, imprisoned by Winter, would start its return. We saw that nature, having died, was about to be reborn.
It was easy for our ancestors to believe that their loved ones could return together with the Sun on the Milky Way, a place called Dausos, as did the birds who had disappeared in the winter. Thus, when the Northern Star appears in the sky on December 24, we come together with our families and friends to welcome our ancestors around a white linen covered table to welcome our ancestors and to renew our spiritual values.
There are few nations that have placed such importance on celebrating Christmas Eve, Kūčios. To every Lithuanian, no matter how far he is or how difficult the journey, there is no greater sadness than not being home to share the Kučiu evening meal. We believe that, on this night, the boundary between life and death dissolves. We place a candle in the window to welcome our ancestors and those who have come back and are without a family waiting for them.
We hang a bird made of straw above the table to remind us of the long journey our ancestors took coming on bird’s wings from Dausos, eternal resting place. We place an empty chair and a plate with a branch of evergreen fir, symbolizing eternal life, and a cross to remember those who are not with us.
The empty chair reminds us of those we have lost, of our parents and grandparents, of those who are alone in foreign lands, of those who were in refugee camps after the Second World War, those in slave labor camps in the Gulag in Siberia. It reminds us of our freedom fighters in their underground bunkers in the darkness of the forest. What sorrow must have been theirs to have no one with whom to break the holy bread!
It is there at the Kūčiu table that thousands of years of Lithuanian traditions intertwine with the miraculous birth of the Christ Child; the empty plate holding a branch of a fir tree; plotkelės, the wafers, duona, the daily black rye bread Lithuanians have held most precious and sacred; and the crucifix promising death conquered. Above the table hangs a sodas, an orchard, a complex mystical world made from straw with stars, moon, sun, and birds, symbolizing the Garden of Eden, a symbol of the family’s harmony. In the past the whole family worked on it during Advent. Each small piece of straw was tied to make a whole. The sodas is fragile: if one piece of string breaks, the whole sodas collapses, just as one person’s wrong deed or word affects the whole family.
There are twelve dishes on the Kūčiu table representing the twelve months of the year and the twelve apostles. Ethnographers have recreated a hundred dishes to serve on Christmas Eve. After all, there are five district regions in Lithuania with their own traditions. Aukštaičiai serve a dish made from wheat and honey. Those from Vilnius territory make a soup from baravykai, boletus, the king of mushrooms. Žemaičiai serve potatoes with hemp seed. Suvalkiečiai place on the table boiled peas and beans, representing the tears of Adam exiled from paradise. Dzūkai serve buckwheat cakes called lamančai. Lietuvninkai, those from Lithuania Minor, serve kupūstiene, cabbage soup. All the dishes for Kūčios are made from products that, in ancient times, were kept in storage over the winter: grains, to bring to the family skalsa unity; brined and smoked fish, (no meat could be served because of the strict Advent fast) and berries, nuts, honey and, of course, black bread. A drink made from cranberries is placed in front of each person to make sure no evil would behold him in the coming year since this kisielius had magic to protect him from his enemies. Traditionalists are very conscious of what can be set on the table and frown on improvisations. But, the important rule is that whatever the twelve dishes, all must be tasted by those at the table to bring the hosts blessings and long lives. A tradition unique only to Lithuania dictates that, at the end of the meal, kučiukai, must be served with ground poppy seed milk and honey. This is a bread baked in the smallest of pieces intended for our visiting ancestors so they could swallow them. No matter what word we use in the different regions of Lithuania to describe this bread: priskučiai, šližikai, skrebučiai, riešutėliai, barškučiai, kleckučiai, parpeliukai, no Kūčiu table can be without them. We bake them in abundance because our ancestors, living near the Baltic Sea from time immemorial, are many.
On this the holiest night of all nights celebrated for thousands of years, the ritual is the same. The Father, after reading the story of the Christ Child’s birth, picks up the holy wafer, plotkele, and offers it to the Mother with these words: “If I have hurt you or anyone else at this table with a word or deed, if anyone at this table has anything in your heart against me, atleiskit — forgive me.” Then, he shares his plotkele with each person, who in turn, picks up a wafer and shares it wishing that person blessings, but, most of all, that all would be together again next year. The celebration of Kūčios ended with the family going to Midnight Mass. The food is left on the table so that the visiting souls who have come on their long journey from Dausos could begin their own celebration. At the stroke of midnight, on this longest night of the year, on this night of the birth of Christ Child, a miracle occurs: all animals speak in human voices, and the water in wells turns to wine. But, of course, only those who are pure of heart can hear it and see it.
Kūčios is the most important evening of the year for every Lithuanian: holy, miraculous, filled with love and respect for our families and the remembrance of our ancestors. The candles on the table remind us, descendants of thousands of years of this mystical heritage to safeguard our language, to safeguard our history and its unique traditions, and to remember those who gave their lives that Lithuania is again a free nation in the family of free nations.
Amber
Written by J. Birutė Litvinas, National Lithuanian Affairs, Culture & Language Chair (C-72, Binghamton, NY)
Many Baltic nations consider amber their national treasure, but in none is it so inseparable a part of the culture as it is in Lithuania.
It is very easy to talk factually about amber: about the coniferous forests that inhabited the territory of the Baltic Sea about 45-50 million years ago. About the fact that the trunks of the coniferous trees disintegrated and that the sap petrified and formed veins of amber. It is easy to explain that those territories were flooded by waters which 10-12 thousand years ago formed the Baltic Sea,
Baltijos Jura, the name given to it by the Balts, the tribes who inhabited the territories, only two of which are left today: the Lithuanians and Latvians, who speak the oldest Indo-European languages, and who have no relation to the Slavic or Germanic people. It is easy to explain that today the Baltic Sea still washes those same shores and deposits the “Baltic Gold,” as amber is known there.
It is much more difficult, however, to explain what amber means to those of us who call themselves the Baltic People, whose ancestors gave the name to the sea, which after a storm throws out its treasure, to the sea which in Lithuanian means “white.” It is much more difficult to explain what a Lithuanian feels when he touches and holds a piece of amber in his hands knowing this is as close as he’ll ever come to touching eternity in the form of the sun’s rays; that in his hands he holds the amber which his ancestors, believing it will light their path to paradise, carried with them to their afterlife. There is no other nation where amber and its lore is so closely intertwined into its everyday life, national identity, literature, art, legends, and myths.
Legend has it that Baltic Gold comes from the goddess Juratė’s amber palace. Her father, the god, Perkunas, learning about her love for a fisherman, Kastytis, cast down bolts of lightning and broke this magnificent amber palace on the bed of the Baltic Sea into pieces, and Kastytis, a mortal who dared to touch a goddess, drowned. When there is a storm on the Baltic Sea, the Lithuanians all know that it is not the wind but Juratė crying for her love. And, when a storm deposits tiny pieces of amber on the shore, we know that they are pieces of the palace where Jurate loved Kastytis, and we rush to gather what is left of true love.
Homer in THE ODYSSEY talks about only one precious stone, a necklace made of gold encrusted with amber which shone like the sun and was worn by Penelope. The Greeks called amber “electron” because of their spindles made from amber, for which they traded with the Balts. Touching the wool yarn, it gave off blues sparkles. It is the same name the Greeks gave to lightning. The Roman historian, Pliny the Elder, in his book, HISTORIA NATURALUS, wrote that children should always wear amber amulets to protect them from evil. It is interesting that the Lithuanian word for amber, “gintaras,” comes from the word “ginti” “to protect.” Further, Pliny wrote, that one of the best ways to assess how rich a man is, is to see his amber collection worn by his wife, since amber was so precious that for a small amber statue a Roman could buy a slave. He further tells about one soldier’s orders to go to the lands the Romans called “Aisti,” as they called the Balts, and bring back amber for the Emperor Nero. Nero so loved red amber that Roman women dyed their hair red.
Scholars in Cairo Museum studying the finds of Pharaoh Tutemkamen were surprised to find a large piece of Baltic amber surrounded by diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. They knew it was Baltic amber because of its chemical make-up. Baltic amber alone contains succinite acid. The Latin term, “pinus succinifera” is given to the pine tree which grew 30 million years ago on the Baltic Sea’s territory. Only amber that has this property is called true amber.
Many materials that are similar are found in other parts of the world, but they are not considered “true amber.” In the seventh century the Moors, having conquered Middle and Asia Minor, used much of their silver to obtain amber from the Balts. The amber was so priced that it was worth twice the price of gold and was used, then as now, to make Moslem prayer beads, each bead symbolizing one of the 99 names given to Allah. The English word for “amber” came from the Arabs through Spain. “Ambar,” they called it. Birutė Stulgaitė, a Lithuanian jeweler, who does not use any machines only emery paper, a file, and some other tools, explains, “Amber is a very complicated material. From metal or silver, you can make whatever you like. When you take amber, there is no ‘you’; there is only amber.” Amber has a very good color spectrum. We find it in a couple hundred different hues. The most usual color is light yellow or reddish yellow. The color comes from the properties inside. The yellowish tint is imparted by a combination of carbon and oxygen, greenish yellow because of iron, calcite gives tints from brown to black, and so on. The most important reason for the myriad of colors is amber’s structural element - air bubbles. In yellow amber we find that there are from 600 to 2500 trapped air bubbles, in white 9000. The more bubbles that amber contains and the smaller they are, the whiter the amber.
It is not a surprise that amber is disappearing - that there is less and less amber that is called “true amber.” In Kaliningrad they now melt the small pieces of amber and add dyes: red, green, blue. If small pieces of amber are heated 170 - 190 centigrade and then pressed with great weights, they can be formed into larger pieces. However this process produces what is called “stress spangles” and is easy to recognize. But, it is no longer natural amber. Like all imitations it becomes a surrogate.
How far the history of amber has come from those days when the Balts first sat during long, dark winters, scraping the outer bark from pieces of amber and, after lovingly polishing them with ashes, held in their hand what they thought were the sparkling rays of sun. Then, believing that these amulets would ‘ginti’ or protect their sons from all-evil, tied them to the belts of their sons and to the manes of the horses they rode, hugged them, and send them off to fight those who came to take their land. That is why the Lithuanian artisans who work with amber today, and they are many, are artists who know from the depths of their souls amber’s true beauty, its esthetic value, and its tie to history and eternity.
And, how interesting that only now the scientists are announcing what the Baltic women knew from time immemorial when they wore amber every day that the succinite acid of amber worn next to their skin, brings on feelings as does eating chocolate or being in love.
