Natalka Kramarczuk put on a brave face Saturday.
Her surprise 50th birthday had been canceled due to the coronavirus, and she had been ready to celebrate. Besides the milestone birthday, the chair of the Queen of Snows Candidate Committee for the St. Paul Winter Carnival had just beaten breast cancer.
She busied herself around her South St. Paul home, expecting yet another evening cooped up inside and away from friends.
“I’m Type A,” she said. The biggest extrovert you’ll ever find.”
So when her boyfriend, Jeff MacDonald, called her over to the laptop on the kitchen counter around 5 p.m., she was shocked to see her Winter Carnival friends in a Zoom video chat dressed in their royal fineries and crowns.
KNIGHTHOOD VIA VIDEO CHAT
Prime Minister Joseph Johnston introduced his majesty, Darrin Johnson, the 2020 carnival’s King Boreas. Scepter in hand, Johnson began to praise Kramarczuk for her eight years of service to the Royal Family as a mentor to the 140 women who have applied to become a princess or Queen of Snows.
Kramarczuk was delighted to see her friends, the ones she should have been partying with at the Kaposia Club in South St. Paul. But as Johnson talked, she began to realize something much bigger was happening. She was being knighted and this would be the first virtual knighting by the carnival’s Royal Family.
“They knighted me over the computer,” she said. “All the Royal Family was on screen. This is the first time this has ever happened and this legend is 134 years old. It was really special.”
A PRESTIGIOUS CEREMONY
In a normal knighting ceremony, the Royal Family dresses up in their costumes and surprises their unsuspecting volunteer by surrounding them, reading a proclamation of their many contributions to the Winter Carnival and presenting them with a medal and a certificate of knighthood.
The Winter Carnival is the oldest winter festival in the United States. Held in February, the annual fete celebrates the struggle between winter and spring, culminating with a battle between the two and winter being chased away. The legend, which started in the 1800s and was initially written down by Pioneer Press newspaper columnist Frank Madden in 1937, has been updated and revised over the years to include a substantial royal court.
“It’s a very prestigious ceremony,” Kramarczuk said of being knighted.
The event was supposed to happen at her surprise 50th birthday party, something MacDonald had been planning for months. Kramarczuk’s parents delivered birthday flowers to her doorstep and waved, keeping their six-foot distance per coronavirus protocols.
“I applaud the 2020 Royal Family for finding a creative way to keep on spreading the cheer of Winter Carnival,” she said. “They are not allowing this pandemic to stop them from continuing to do what Winter Carnival is known for.”
A RAY OF SUNSHINE IN A DARK TIME
Diagnosed with cancer in August, Kramarczuk, who works as a project manager for Ameriprise, had taken leave to get a double mastectomy and complete the treatments. Two weeks ago she had a final surgery and was pronounced cancer free. The party would also be a celebration of life.
As she stood in front of the computer being knighted by her carnival friends, MacDonald slipped out the knighthood pin and gave it to her.
“I cried like a baby. Both Jeff and I were extremely emotional,” she said. “We wanted to hug everybody. As cheesy as it sounds, we were blowing kisses. That was just a little sunshine that came in when we need something positive.”
Copyright 2020 Pioneer Press.