«The Ice Song» is the main theme of this year’s Ice Sculpture Festival. Artists will try to express all the authenticity of Ukrainian traditional Christmas carols in ice. They will be re-creating the most popular plot lines of the carols as well as beloved characters from these traditional winter songs with the help of massive ice sculptures.
Read: Old Calendar New Year or "Malanka" Celebration in Ukraine
Ukrainian Christmas songs or carols have their origins in antiquity. The themes of Ukrainian Christmas songs vary. Many, of course, deal with the birth of Christ and that occasion's joyful celebrations, and many of them have apocryphal elements; there are carols which contain purely pagan mythological elements; another group deals with Ukrainian history of the 9th to 12th centuries.
Ukrainian Christmas carols (kolyadky and shchedrivky) are the oldest groups of Ukrainian folk songs.
Read: Best Winter Events in Lviv
The festival will last for 2 days, on January 18th and 19th, 2017. All local citizens and foreign guests are welcome to observe the process of creating of ice sculptures by popular Ukrainian artists, who will start their work on Svobody Avenue on the square in front of the Lviv main Christmas Tree.
Photo source: Lviv City Council web page, pinterest.com. All photos belong to their rightful owners.