May 05, 2005
After Easter
Two things about the days after Orthodox Easter.
First, nobody is eating much. Everyone says they have burta plena -- full bellies -- from all the feasting over the long weekend. Orthodox Easter is both a family holiday and a food holiday; great masses of food are cooked, and it's bad manners not to eat. As a result, after the weekend everyone is indopat -- stuffed.
Second, there's a cool little tradition involving eggs.
Romanians make colored eggs for Easter, just as Americans and Germans do. But when they eat them, there's a little ritual they go through. Two people face each other, holding eggs. One says "Christ is risen!" The other replies, "Truly, he is risen!" Then they tap the eggs together until one breaks. This is usually done in a group, with people sort of competing. The person whose egg breaks last is supposed to have good luck in the coming year.
Googling around, it seems there's supposedly some symbolism here... cracking the eggs represents Christ coming out of the tomb, or something like that. But nobody mentioned this to me. (Well, nobody explained the tradition to me at all. They just asked if I wanted an egg, and suddenly, boom, there I was, muttering in my bad Romanian and smacking my egg against one rival after another.)
Interestingly, I didn't see this tradition at Easter (I was still in Albania) nor in the first couple of days after Easter. But suddenly today, everyone is showing up with eggs from the weekend.
I'm guessing that's because, before today, everyone was still indopat.
Posted by douglas at May 5, 2005 01:22 AMFWIW, Ukrainians seem to do it too. My wife spent some time explaining various traditions as we hosted some guests: none of said guests were Orthodox. Actually one was a midwestern protestant. Another was a chinese buddist. The last was an mixed race agnostic. Ah, California. :) It was fun: lots of traditional Ukrainian dishes munched on by all.
Posted by: Will Baird at May 5, 2005 01:20 AMThis is customary in Serbia, too.
Posted by: Bojan at May 5, 2005 01:49 AMWere the references to the risen Christ kept in Easter celebrations during the Communist years?
Posted by: Andrew Reeves at May 5, 2005 02:21 AMYes, the customs were well alive during communist years. Not officially of course, the Easter was competing with 1 May (the labor day). Actually in spite of it, I believe the Church attendance at the Easter midnight mass was very high. On a regular day strolling on streets well after midnight could get you in big trouble with the police (it was called militia, the police was a capitalist ugly word). So for the teenagers Easter was a good opportunity to do something that was not allowed on a regular day, and with very little parental supervision too. The more mature people, who lived through the brutal repression years in the fifties, were more cautious. But us those who were teenagers in the '80 Easter night was something we were looking forward to. This way we got to know more about the biblical story too. Not all communist countries were the same, in Poland I believe the Easter (the Catholic one) was an official holiday, with school break and everything.
Posted by: Marian at May 5, 2005 03:20 AMWe do that in Germany too.
Posted by: camu at May 5, 2005 09:05 AMMy only experience of Easter in an Orthodox country has been Greece. My take on it is that it is the big holiday with gift-giving, cards and travelling up-country to feast with parents that we in the Antipodes associate with Christmas, instead.
Is the big Easter celebration a feature of life in other Orthodox countries such as Serbia and Romania?
[In Australia the correct response to "Christ is risen" is "He is risen indeed." No eggs are harmed in this exchange of greetings. Truly the world is a very big place.]
Posted by: Syd Webb at May 5, 2005 12:36 PM"Is the big Easter celebration a feature of life in other Orthodox countries such as Serbia and Romania?"
Syd, Easter is _the_ Orthodox holiday, everywhere in the World.
Even in those countries where the Orthodox faith is only a minority religion, the Orthodox Easter traditions still have a very visible impact. Here in Finland, even the Lutherans eat pasha during the holidays; and the Lutheran church has also adopted some old Orthodox Easter rituals, the Escort of the Cross around the Churchyard as the most visible example.
The so-called "egg tournament", by the way, is pretty much a universal sport. Over here, it's known as "liitsaus", and is also one of the Easter traditions. The goal is to break the shell of the opponent's egg while keeping your own intact; the winner gets both eggs. The Christian invocations aren't part of it, however.
(As I've previously mentioned, the resident Orthodox Church also follows the Gregorian Calendar, so we had our Easter celebrations already over a month ago.)
Cheers,
Jalonen
That's common in Serbia as well! I thought it was really interesting.
Posted by: Ange. at May 12, 2005 11:55 PM