See Christmas trees from around the world at Indy’s Global Village
(MIRROR INDY) — Mariya Plichta, 34, has lived half of her life in the U.S., but her birth country, Ukraine, is rarely far from her thoughts.
Ukraine has been at war since Russian forces invaded in February 2022. Although she is thousands of miles away, Plichta believes every Ukrainian, no matter where they live, is affected by the conflict.
“We are here safe, but we are still affected because we have families there,” Plichta said. “We worry about them. I have cousins who are on the front lines, and I’m constantly worried that we’re gonna get a call that something happened to them.”
She’s hoping to raise awareness of Ukraine’s plight and culture by decorating a Christmas tree for the World of Trees exhibit at Indy’s Global Village on the west side. The exhibit will feature dozens of trees representing the many countries from which Indianapolis residents originate through Jan. 18.
According to Daniel Del Real, the exhibit’s curator, the World of Trees helps folks celebrate their cultures and allows people to understand the diversity here in Indianapolis.
“We have lots of people who are very proud of their culture,” he said. “They are very passionate, and they come and get involved and decorate a tree for everyone to see.”
A bit of Ukraine in Indiana
The exhibit gives people like Plichta a way to remember home.
She and her immediate family moved to Indianapolis from the small city of Drohobych in western Ukraine in 2008 when she was just 16. Her family wanted to move closer to her grandparents, who had emigrated to Indiana decades earlier.
She remembers how difficult the move was for her, a teenager who had recently graduated from high school.
“It was shocking,” she said. “I was never on an airplane before, and then everything was completely different here.”
The language was different, public transportation was different and even the people were different.
“There’s not one culture here, there are so many,” Plichta said. “This is what we didn’t have back in Ukraine. Everybody went to the same church, everyone celebrated the same holidays.”
Plichta has since grown accustomed to American life. In the years since, she’s received an education at Ivy Tech Community College, become a banker and started a family of her own.
She sees her tree as a way to educate people about Ukraine.
That goes hand in hand with her role as a founding member of the Ukrainian Society of Indiana, an organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating Ukrainian culture and making connections between Indiana and Ukraine.
Instead of a traditional pine with green needles, hers is the golden brown color of wheat, one of Ukraine’s major exports. It is essentially a large version of a traditional Ukrainian Christmas decoration made from a stalk of wheat, called a didukh.
Atop the layers of wheat are red poppies, signifying the soldiers and civilians who have died trying to repulse the Russian invasion.
She’s also included a map with embroidery unique to each Ukrainian region.
“Back in the day when people didn’t have photo passports, you could identify what region they were from as long as they had their embroidery on,” Plichta said. “It worked like a passport.”
Christmas cactuses
Trees are decorated in the traditions of dozens of cultures from all over the world.
Del Real, the exhibit’s curator, decorated a pair of cactuses that represents his experience as a Mexican American.
He was born in Tijuana, the Mexican city along the border with California. He and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child. Later, when he was 14, they all moved to Indiana.
“In L.A., we lived in a neighborhood called Huntington Park that was predominantly Mexican American,” Del Real remembered. “White people and Black people were the minority. Here (in Indianapolis), there might have been four or five Latinos in the entire school.”
Del Real’s cactuses include ornaments featuring a traditional Mexican game similar to bingo called lotería, which features art that is often recreated in Mexican American pop culture imagery, clay animals and an Aztec calendar. It also includes traditional American Christmas imagery with a Mexican American twist — a pair of Santa Claus figures wearing sombreros and holding a tequila bottle, Mexico’s official national drink.
“It’s my experience as a Mexican American,” Del Real said. “Being Mexican is not really a homogenous thing. It’s very varied. Mexico itself is very diverse. There’s Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Amish and more.”
If you go
The World of Trees exhibit at Indy’s Global Village, 4233 Lafayette Road, is free and will run 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays through Jan. 18. For more information, call 317-751-5229.