Harrison church keeping Ukrainian Easter egg tradition alive

Creating traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs is not for the faint of heart.

The process can take two to four hours, even for the simplest eggs, instructor Bernadette Thorwart said Saturday morning in the basement of Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Harrison. Sometimes egg makers will take part in 36-hour marathon sessions, she said.

The eggs, called pysanky, are a tradition thousands of years started in Eastern Europe. Colorful and intricate patterns are etched upon the eggs using beeswax and dyes.

To encourage the dozen pysanky participants, Thorwart reminded them not to expect perfection from their designs.

“Nobody makes a perfect egg, except God,” she said.

Thorwart, of Glassport, has been practicing pysanky making and teaching the art since 2006. Her ancestry is Polish and other nearby Slavic nations, and her dad used to make simple versions when she was young.

Ukrainians and other Eastern European cultures have been making the eggs since before Christianity spread through the continent. It started as a pagan tradition to celebrate the coming of spring, and later, in the 900s, Christians incorporated the practice into their Easter festivities.

Thorwart said pysanky-

making has seen a resurgence in North America after the war in Ukraine, and many Americans with Ukrainian and Slavic roots are creating the eggs as a way to pay homage to Ukraine. She has taught classes on pysanky all over the Pittsburgh region, as well as in other parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Upstate New York.

She said she has spoken to people in Ukraine who have stopped making the eggs because of the seriousness of the war, and they have expressed gratitude that Americans are growing the tradition stateside.

Dee Caesar of New Kensington isn’t Ukrainian but is happy to be making the eggs as a reminder of the country’s effort to fight off the invading Russians.

She said this is her first time creating a pysanka, singular for pysanky, and she will focus on easy patterns.

Erika Terek of Gibsonia has been making the eggs with her friends and family for the last few years. Saturday’s event was the fourth time the Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church has hosted a pysanky event in Harrison.

“We don’t want these old transitions to keep getting lost in time,” Terek said.

Participants take melted beeswax and draw patterns on the eggs using a small metal tool known as a kistka. The word pysanky comes from the Ukrainian word, pysaty, which means to write, Thorwart said.

After the patterns dry, the eggs are dipped in colored dyes and then washed in cleaning solutions, which leaves colorful patterns on the eggs, Thorwart said.

Lindsay Taylor of New Kensington said the process is challenging because egg makers have to think several steps ahead to ensure the colors are correct. She said she wants her egg to be blue and will probably try an intricate pattern called “48 Triangles.”

“It is a whole different way of thinking,” Taylor said. “You have to work backwards and keep track of each layer as you go.”

Mary Lou Beck of Harrison organized the event. She said it was perfect for Lent in the run-up to Easter.

She said many people of Ukrainian descent had heard about pysanky from their family members but didn’t know how to create the intricate ovum art forms.

“This community has a lot of people with Polish, Slavic and Ukrainian backgrounds,” Beck said. “We wanted to keep this tradition going for those families.”