Newly arrived Ukrainians celebrate Christmas, pray for their homeland amid war. ‘It’s constantly on our minds.’

According to Ukrainian tradition, the first star that appears in the sky on Christmas Eve signifies the birth of Christ.

Believers peer through their windows throughout the evening hoping to get a glimpse of this celestial sign of the Nativity, which follows a day of fasting and prayer and worship. Only then can the elaborate holiday dinner, caroling and other festivities begin.

After fleeing their home in war-torn Ukraine, the Marykot family planned to carry out these ancient customs this weekend during their first Christmas together in the Chicago area.

Gathering with fellow parishioners at St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in west suburban Bloomingdale on Friday, they prayed for peace and autonomy for their homeland as the Russian invasion stretches into its 12th month.

In accordance with the Julian calendar, St. Andrew celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7 — about two weeks after the Dec. 25 date observed by much of Western Christianity.

For centuries, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians have commemorated Christmas on this date, along with millions of Russians, Ethiopians, Serbians and Christians of other ethnicities. However, the custom might be in flux in Ukraine due to the war: The Orthodox Church of Ukraine this holiday season gave individual churches a choice to observe the holiday on Dec. 25 or Jan. 7. Some Ukrainians chose to celebrate the earlier holiday, to mark a break with Russia, while some have held to the traditional calendar; others chose to celebrate Christmas on both dates.

At St. Andrew, several regal Christmas trees decorated the cathedral, each adorned with dozens of handmade embroidered Ukrainian ornaments. Near the entrance, a creche of baby Jesus in a manger and the surrounding Nativity scene rested a few feet from a sign bearing a fundraising thermometer, tracking parish donations for Ukraine.

Church officials estimated that some 250 newly arrived Ukrainians have begun worshipping at St. Andrew since the Russian invasion began nearly a year ago.

The Marykots — a priest, his wife and two adult daughters — said through an interpreter that they were grateful to spend Christmas together amid peace and safety in the United States.

After Christmas Eve church services on Friday evening, they planned to return to their Schaumburg home for the customary Sviata Vecheria or Holy Supper, a traditional 12-course vegetarian meal that commences after the first star glows in the evening. Dishes include kutia, a sweet wheat berry pudding, and Ukrainian stuffed dumplings called vareniki, which are similar to pierogis.

After dinner, families sing Ukrainian Christmas carols, such as “Boh Predvicnyj,” which translates to God Eternal: “God eternal is born tonight/ He came down from above/ To save us with His love/ And He rejoiced.”

On Christmas Day, they intended to worship at St. Andrew in the morning followed by a potluck lunch there and more caroling.

“We thank God with a prayer out of our mouths for everything that we have had in the past and for everything that is coming in the new year,” said the Rev. Yaroslav Marykot, who serves as a pastor at St. Andrew. “And we ask God that next Christmas be a Christmas where we are already at peace.”

‘I had no choice’

His daughter, 18-year-old Iryna, recalled waking to the sounds of explosions on Feb. 24, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of her homeland by land, air and sea.

Blasts rocked an airport less than a mile from her university in Ivano-Frankisk, in western Ukraine. In the early hours of the morning, she and her roommates began frantically packing their suitcases with as many possessions as they could carry; they lived on the fifth floor and were afraid to use the elevator in case the power went out, potentially trapping them inside.

Iryna headed to her hometown of Snyatyn near the Romanian border, where her mother, Hanna, and 20-year-old sister, Sofiia, were also packing their bags to flee.

The mother and daughters escaped by car that day, heading for Romania, roughly 60 miles away. But the traffic was so congested with other evacuees that the trip took two days.

“The traffic was immense,” Hanna said. “It was at a dead standstill even to go that short distance.”

Yaroslav was already in the United States; he had been in the western suburbs for about five years on a religious worker visa, and had been trying without success to bring his family here to join him.

From thousands of miles away, the father was in constant contact with his wife and daughters on FaceTime, trying to guide them out of their country with as much information as he could glean from news sources.

The mother drove, terrified as explosions and blasts racked the terrain around her.

“I had no choice,” Hanna said. “My children are my greatest love and asset. I had no choice.”

Low-flying helicopters whirred overhead, but it was impossible to discern whether they were manned by Ukrainian or Russian forces.

When the women crossed the border, volunteers greeted them with food, lodging recommendations and prepaid phone cards so they could contact loved ones back home. Even after they were out of Ukraine and safe, Sofiia suffered from nightmares, she recalled. Iryna said she couldn’t sleep for several days.

“Even when we stopped driving, after those first days of getting across the border, we still couldn’t fall asleep after that. We didn’t know where we were going. We didn’t know what was happening next. The uncertainty made it impossible to sleep.”

The mother and daughters then traveled by car to Italy, where they lived for about three months. In May, they made a potentially perilous journey back to their home in Ukraine. They had left under duress the first day of the attack, but needed to retrieve various documents and medical records in order to file forms to come to the United States through Uniting for Ukraine, a Biden administration program that allows Ukrainians fleeing the war to enter the U.S. for two years with a private sponsor.

They were scared to go back.

“But we knew that with God’s help we would be OK,” Hanna said, adding that they had better knowledge of Russian strategy and common military targets by that point, and had planned a safe route out of Ukraine.

They remained in Ukraine for a nerve-wracking six weeks laced with intermittent air raid sirens and bursts of explosions. After they were approved for admission to the U.S., they traveled to Poland. On July 15, they flew directly from Krakow to Chicago, and finally reunited with Yaroslav.

The Marykots said their reunion has been a bright spot amid the tragedy and trauma of war.

“Even though I was here with my spiritual family for five years, I was not here with my whole family, and there was a period of loneliness where I missed my family,” Yaroslav said. “That’s the beauty that the United States has given us, my family, a way to reunite. And there is a happy moment that, even due to war, we were able to unite the family in the United States.”

The Marykots have a third daughter, 25-year-old Viktoria, who is living in Poland. She is expected to come to the United States later this month, to live with her parents and sisters in Schaumburg.

“And that will complete the family,” Yaroslav said.

A resurgence

While the stress and anxiety of war has dissipated over the last few months, Iryna said she still sometimes relives the terror of her escape.

“Even though we’re here and we’re safe, you cannot help but return every time to the visions and the sounds and everything ... you return immediately back to those moments,” she said. “It doesn’t go away. So whenever you think about it or talk about it, you relive it again and again and again in your head.”

They live in perpetual fear for relatives and friends back in Ukraine.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire during the Christmas holiday, Kyiv rejected the truce and Western officials expressed mistrust of Putin’s intentions.

“We also as a family, we never stop thinking about what’s going on there,” Yaroslav said. “So we have this stress of worrying about what’s happening in Ukraine. Even though we are here, it doesn’t stop or cut itself off. It’s constantly on our minds and how we can help and what we can do to help in Ukraine as well.”

For the mother and daughters, the war instantaneously disrupted their lives. Hanna worked as a lawyer in Ukraine. Sofiia and Iryna attended universities there.

“Each one of us had a plan and purpose in Ukraine,” Hanna said. “And everything in one moment was completely changed and taken away.”

Now they’re taking English language classes. Hanna has found work helping a Ukrainian lawyer. The daughters enrolled in classes at Harper College. They try to simultaneously keep up online with their courses in Ukraine, but that’s proved difficult: The classes are in the middle of the night due to the time difference, and the instruction is often suspended when air raid sirens blare and the class needs to take shelter underground.

“We’re now living for the future; we’re not sad in that respect,” Yaroslav said. “We’re moving forward as a family.”

After the Russian invasion, St. Andrew immediately rallied to raise money to help Ukraine, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds and goods, including medical equipment, thermal socks and bulletproof vests. Recently, the church donated a hundred diesel heaters to help warm Ukrainian troops in foxholes; the heaters are expected to arrive in Kyiv in the coming days, said John Jaresko, president of the parish board.

Since the February Russian invasion, Jaresko said, the parish has also seen a resurgence in attendance among third- and fourth-generation Ukrainians looking for ways help their ancestral homeland or rediscover their heritage.

“The war has brought back many people who were already assimilated into American life but realized they’re of Ukrainian descent,” he said. “They searched out their Ukrainian roots, their Ukrainian church, their Ukrainian family in order to make donations and in order to support Ukraine. It’s kind of amazing. We’ve had an influx of people who are third generation, fourth generation — who don’t speak Ukrainian but say, ‘I know my baba (grandmother) was Ukrainian,’ and are now asking: ‘What can I do? How can I help?’”

The war has also spurred greater international recognition of the sovereignty of Ukraine, he added.

“Right now the world, due to this war, understands that there is a country called Ukraine,” he said. “There is a language that is Ukrainian. There is a people that are Ukrainian. And they are not Russian. So that has been something that for hundreds of years people have tried to accomplish and fought for and died for. And all of a sudden here it is, even though it is through great tragedy.”

eleventis@chicagotribune.com