From December 5 to 24, 2025, the Donetsk Youth Palace "Yunist" organized a remote regional festival of Christmas traditions called "Christmas Miracle."
The festival brought together the educational and creative communities of Donetsk Oblast around Ukrainian Christmas customs. Students and teachers from general secondary, extracurricular, vocational, pre-higher, and higher education institutions took part in the festival.
In total, more than 500 participants from Bakhmut, Druzhkivka, Kostyantynivka, Kramatorsk, Myrnohrad, Sloviansk, Toretsk, Lyman, Mariupol, Kurakhove, and Bilitsk took part in the competition.
The festival featured several competition categories: nativity plays, carols and New Year songs, and Christmas dishes. The judging was based on different principles: the winners in the artistic categories were determined by a jury, while the Christmas dish competition was decided by audience voting.
The nativity plays and vocal performances were distinguished by well-thought-out staging, sincerity of performance, and attentive attitude to tradition. Based on the results of the audience vote in the "Nativity Play" category, the "Audience Choice" award went to the group of students from Bakhmut Secondary School No. 18 named after Dmytro Chernyavsky.
In the "Christmas Carols and New Year's Songs" category, the decision was made by the jury. The winners of the GRAND PRIX were Marina Tolochko (Bakhmut Pedagogical College) and a group of students from the Viktor Yegorovich von Graff Velykoanadol Forestry College. The Audience Choice Award in this category went to Veronika Khomenko, a student at Velykonovosilkovsky Secondary School No. 2.
The competition for the best Christmas dish attracted particular attention, with the following categories: Kutia, Vareniki, Christmas Table Dishes (12 meatless dishes), Beverages, and Desserts. This is where the audience was most active: during the online voting from December 17 to 20, 2025, more than 5,000 votes were cast on the Palace website. The presented works impressed with their diversity, authenticity of recipes, and attentive attitude to the symbolism of the Christmas table.