Merry Christmas, with Hope from Ukraine

As Christmas approaches and the familiar chimes of Carol of the Bells begin to fill the air, it’s easy to be swept up in the festive spirit—the twinkling lights, the warmth of family gatherings, and the hopes for peace. Christmas is coming – the season of goodwill, a celebration of light amidst the darkness of winter.

…Hark how the bells

Sweet silver bells

All seem to say

Throw cares away…

Yet, as we revel in the joy of this iconic tune, few know the deeper, untold story behind it. What if I told you that this beloved melody, synonymous with Christmas, actually has its roots in Ukraine, a country now locked in a fierce battle for survival against Russian aggression? Moreover, what if I told you that the music of Carol of the Bells, based on the Ukrainian folk song Shchedryk, was arranged in the city of Pokrovsk – a place now at the very heart of Ukraine’s resistance?

Pokrovsk: the Music Begins

The sheet music for Carol of the Bells, published in New York in 1936 by Carl Fisher, identifies it as a Ukrainian Christmas carol, with music composed by Mykola Leontovych and lyrics by Peter Wilhousky. This description is repeated in countless editions of the song, which are performed worldwide every Christmas. However, oddly enough, the music piece has no actual connection to Christmas: it is not a carol, and is not even associated with winter.

In Ukrainian, Shchedryk means ‘The Generous One’, derived from the Ukrainian word ‘shchedryj’, which translates to ‘bountiful’. Shchedryk is a traditional Ukrainian song celebrating the arrival of the new year and the prosperity it promises. Its roots lie in ancient pre-Christian traditions, which marked the beginning of the year with the arrival of spring. Shchedryk’s original narrative features a swallow flying into a home to herald good fortune and abundance:

The swallow has flown in,

She began to chirp…

Shchedryk’s simple four-note ostinato was transformed into a choral masterpiece by Mykola Leontovych (1877–1921), a Ukrainian composer and conductor. From 1904 to 1908, Leontovych lived in the village of Hryshyno – now Pokrovsk. During these years, while teaching music at the local railway school, Leontovych began shaping the first version of Shchedryk, setting the stage for what would later become a symbol of Christmas worldwide.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the memory of Mykola Leontovych was deeply woven into Pokrovsk’s identity. The city of 69,000 residents honored the composer in various ways. A street and the largest children’s music school in the region were named after him. Two memorial plaques commemorated his presence—one on the building where he had taught and another at the railway station. Additionally, the local historical museum hosted an exhibition dedicated to his life and work.

Moreover, after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and escalated its hybrid war in Donbas, Leontovych’s legacy became a form of cultural self-defense for Pokrovsk. By commemorating Leontovych the city sought to assert its Ukrainian identity in the face of the encroaching ‘Russian World’ (Russkiy Mir). In 2016, during Ukraine’s decommunization drive, the city changed its name from Krasnoarmeysk, a Soviet-era name glorifying the Red Army, to Pokrovsk, a name that reflects Ukrainian traditions and distances the city from Russia and the Soviet past. The following year, the city adopted a new coat of arms, featuring a swallow from Leontovych’s Shchedryk—a poignant symbol of spring and renewal. This rebranding was part of a broader effort to reassert the city’s cultural and national identity. In 2018, a monument to Leontovych was unveiled, solidifying his role as a symbol of Ukraine’s cultural resilience against the Russian Empire.

Today, the Pokrovsk that once celebrated Leontovych is no more. Russia’s invasion has reduced the city to ruins.

Ukraine’s Musical Ambassadors: The Rise of Shchedryk

With Russia denying Ukraine’s political and cultural independence (according to Putin, Ukraine is a historical mistake, an artificial state created on Russia’s historical lands; there is no such thing as Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture), this war is not just a military conflict, but also a cultural battle.  From the outset of the invasion, Russia has relentlessly destroyed Ukraine’s cultural heritage (see: Damaged cultural sites in Ukraine verified by UNESCO). This is why, in response, Ukraine has been actively dismantling symbols of the “Russian World” within its borders (removing monuments to Russian cultural and historical figures and  banning place names associated with Russia). To survive as a sovereign nation, Ukraine must safeguard both its territorial and cultural integrity. It must also confront the persistent myth of historical unity with Russia, a narrative Putin articulated in his 2021 essay, ‘On Historical Unity Between Russians and Ukrainians’ which portrays Ukraine as merely ‘another Russia’, a ‘buffer zone’, ‘Russia’s historical land’ or a ‘sphere of Russia’s geopolitical interest’, rather than an independent state.

For Ukraine, the struggle for recognition—through both military resistance and cultural mobilization—is not new. Over a century ago, the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR), a brief manifestation of Ukraine’s statehood emerging from the collapse of the Russian Empire, used Ukrainian culture as a tool of international diplomacy. Amid the bloody turmoil of the Civil War, Ukrainians had to convince the West – the victorious  Entente powers – that they were a nation distinct from Russia. To achieve this, Ukraine’s government used different means, including culture, particularly Ukrainian music.

In early 1919, at the initiative of Symon Petliura, the leader of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian National Choir, under the direction of Oleksandr Koshyts was created to promote Ukrainian culture abroad. The choir performed Ukrainian songs for international audiences, including in Paris, where the Peace Conference was taking place. The choir’s performances, particularly the rendition of Shchedryk garnered significant attention. While the cultural mission proved highly successful—over the course of two years, the Ukrainian National Choir performed in 45 cities across 10 Western European countries, acting as cultural ambassadors of Ukraine and generating approximately 600 reviews in the foreign press—the military and diplomatic efforts of the Ukrainian People’s Republic ultimately fell short. The Paris Peace Conference, which was brought to an end with the formal inauguration of the League of Nations on 16 January 1920, did not officially recognise Ukraine’s independence: the Allied powers largely viewed Ukraine as part of the former Russian Empire. Lacking Western support, the Ukrainian People’s Republic eventually lost its military struggle to Soviet Russia after years of fighting and geopolitical upheaval.

Mykola Leontovych: The Triumph of Music and the Tragedy of Terror

In January 1921, the Ukrainian National Choir returned to Paris. On the morning of January 23, a Sunday, they delivered a captivating performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. At the heart of the program was Leontovych’s Shchedryk, which left the audience spellbound. Yet, as the echoes of Shchedryk resounded in Europe, tragedy unfolded back home in Ukraine: the night before, Mykola Leontovych fell victim to the Soviet Red Terror, a deliberate campaign by the Bolsheviks to suppress Ukrainian intellectuals and cultural leaders—anyone who could symbolize or inspire a free Ukraine. He was assassinated in his own home by an undercover Soviet Cheka agent, Afanasy Gryshchenko, who had infiltrated the composer’s family under the guise of friendship. For decades, the exact circumstances of Leontovych’s death were kept in secrecy. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when state archives were finally opened, did the truth come to light.

The stark contrast between the triumph of Leontovych’s music abroad and the violence that silenced him at home is a chilling reminder of the stakes in Ukraine’s struggle for independence.

Crossing the Ocean: Shchedryk in the USA

In September 1922, the Ukrainian National Choir left Europe for good and moved to the United States. During its first month in America, the choir recorded Shchedryk in a Brunswick studio in New York, marking the first recording of this iconic piece on American soil. This performance was especially poignant: the composer of Shchedryk had been killed, and the Ukrainian state that had sent its musical ambassadors no longer existed on the world’s political map—but the music lived on. By December 1922, the Russian Empire had reemerged as the USSR, and for the next 70 years, Ukraine fell under the control of the Kremlin; only Shchedryk remained free.

From the mid-1920s, the iconic Ukrainian song Shchedryk began its own life in the United States. Despite already being popular as Ukrainian music, it faced attempts by Russians to claim it as their own, a common tactic of the Empire—anything it couldn’t destroy, it tried to appropriate. A striking example of this occurred in 1925, when the Russian Art Choir in New York included Shchedryk in its repertoire, and the song was featured on Broadway in the musical The Song of the Flame, a production involving the famous American composer George Gershwin. Though the musical was about the Russian Revolution of 1917, the creators chose to include Ukrainian folk songs, such as Shchedryk, and labeled them as Russian.

In addition, for American audiences, anything associated with the Russian Empire/ the Soviet Union was often labeled (and still is!) as ‘Russian’, regardless of its true origins. This misperception affected Shchedryk several times. In 1926, when Columbia Records released a recording of Shchedryk, it was labeled as a ‘Russian folk carol’, with no mention of Mykola Leontovych.

The first English version of Shchedryk was created in 1933. Adapted by American conductor Max Cronn, the song was reimagined as The Bluebirds Song, though it was still mistakenly attributed to Russian origins. The lyrics went as follows:

Bluebirds awing,

Happiness bring,

Twitter and sing,

Telling of spring…

In 1946, the renowned American choir conducted by Robert Shaw included a revealing note in their Christmas Hymns and Carols album for Carol of the Bells: “A typical Russian folk carol by Leontovych — a composer about whom we could find no information.” This lack of information was hardly surprising, given the Soviet regime’s suppression of Ukrainian culture and the erasure of the history of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, which kept much of Leontovych’s legacy concealed until 1991.

The most famous adaptation of Shchedryk came in 1936, when Peter Wilhousky, an American conductor of Ukrainian descent, transformed the song into Carol of the Bells. Wilhousky heard the sound of Christmas bells in the music. He wrote new English lyrics focused on the joyful ringing, rather than the song’s original lyrics about a swallow bringing the spring. Carol of the Bells gave Shchedryk a new life. Since then, it has been performed by leading  prominent choirs and orchestras, and even became a part of popular culture, with renditions in jazz, rock, and other genres (See: the Tabernacle Choir, Pentatonix, the Piano Guys, New York Philharmonic  and many, many more)

The melody of Mykola Leontovych has also captured the American film industry. Since the 1930s, the song has featured in over a hundred American films and television shows. Among the most famous are Home Alone, The Muppet Show, South Park, and many others.

Beyond the silver screen, the song has become a staple in the advertising world. Since at least 1973, the iconic melody has been used by some of the world’s most recognizable brands in their ad campaigns.

 One seems to hear

Words of good cheer

From everywhere

Filling the air

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas

 Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has found itself trapped in what feels like a perpetual February. In Ukrainian, February is called ‘лютий’ – lyutyi, a word that carries a double meaning: it refers both to the month itself and to something fierce or cruel. This linguistic nuance perfectly encapsulates the essence of the month—a time when harsh winter winds cut through the air, and nature seems to hold its breath, waiting for the arrival of spring.

As Russia’s aggression continues, Ukraine endures a prolonged, brutal winter—a long period of suffering marked by the storm of war. Yet, despite this, Ukraine celebrates Christmas. In 2023, many Ukrainian Orthodox Christians shifted their Christmas celebration from January 7 to December 25, breaking away from Russian Orthodox tradition and, symbolically, from Russia itself.

In the depths of this dark winter, Shchedryk—the song born from Ukraine’s heart— shines as a gift to the world. It is a testament to Ukraine’s resilience, its cultural spirit, and its undying hope for renewal and freedom. As the familiar chimes of Carol of the Bells ring through the air this Christmas, let us hear them not only as a celebration of holiday joy but also as a reminder of Ukraine’s fierce struggle for sovereignty and peace.

Merry Christmas, with hope from Ukraine.

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As an international lawyer and Ukrainian citizen, my insights into Russia’s invasion come from my roles as a legal expert, witness, and victim of the war. While I strive to present an objective analysis, my personal involvement and the harsh realities of living through Russia’s aggression may introduce a degree of bias. It is important for me to transparently acknowledge this risk providing context about my background and perspective from which I write.