“The war also continues during Christmas,” said the presenter of the eight o’clock news on Monday evening. She sounded surprised, as if she had counted on the Christmas Truces of more than a century ago – after all, in December 1914, soldiers on the Belgian border temporarily laid down their weapons to play brotherly football in the no man’s land between the trenches. I tried to imagine Zelensky and Putin together on one christmas cracker but saw only First Lady Olena Zelenska in front of me. “My anger against the Russians will, I fear, be eternal,” she said at the weekend NRC.
Next to the television stood the recycled Christmas tree, brought in last minute from the backyard, root ball and all. A snail was hidden between the branches. On the internet, the annual shudder reports were doing the rounds again, about the thousands of creepy crawlies hiding in the spruce green. Moths and mites in the angel’s hair, bloodthirsty ticks that plop down on the dog from the peak. Those critters are mainly the victims themselves: indoors it is often much too dry and too hot. Even if the CV is a few degrees lower than usual this year.
The baby snail was allowed out, only later did I see the glittering slime trail it had left on the needles. As in the Ukrainian folktale I heard while dining, about a widow who had no money to buy Christmas decorations. On Christmas Eve, she was in tears, knowing that her children would be disappointed because of the bare tree. Some spiders heard her cry, and decided to weave graceful webs as a surprise. The next morning the rising sun shone through the windows and made the gossamer-thin spider silk sparkle like silver. The family considered themselves lucky to have the most beautiful tree in the world.
It is still a tradition in Ukraine to decorate the Christmas tree with artful spiders. The spider as an ode to living in the moment. I was thinking of the Twitter hashtag #warcoffee, of Yaroslava Antipina, who lives in Kiev, who still goes to pick up coffee every day despite the rain of bombs. Zelenska also agreed NRC how she tries, with difficulty, to cherish the mundane. “We had a very nice summer in Ukraine. Then I would look up and think, How can something as horrible as a rocket fly in such a beautiful sky?”
On New Year’s Eve 2018, Volodymyr Zelensky announced live on television that he wanted to become president of Ukraine. His wife still knew nothing. Now, barely four years later, the whole world knows his name.
This summer, Polish paleontologists even named a 150-million-year-old sea lily fossil after him. Ausichicrinites zelenskyyi has ten long arms and a whorl of claws for a firm grip. That gives hope for 2023.
Gemma Venhuizen is biology editor at NRC and writes a column here every Wednesday.
A version of this article also appeared in the December 28, 2022 newspaper