8) Good Saturday. The day goes kind of boringly, so i’ll skip to night. Midnight, everyone is gathered inside and out of the churches. Once the clock hits 12, there’s fireworks, rejoice, bells ringing happily and people crack eggs..i mean…2 peopel bump the tops and bottoms of the red painted eggs. It’s good luck, it shoos evils spirits and the breaking of the Tomb that Christ walked out of.
We hold big candles, traditionally bought for us by our Godmother/fathers, decorated extravagantly (another competition of who has the most kitch candle every year).
We light them with the Holy Light, supposedly brought straight from Jerusalem, which we save until the end of the Liturgy to bring home and light our lamps, to bring good luck. People who stay till the end of the liturgy enjoy some of the best masses and also get to eat the first blessd bread for the year.
Now i need to remind you, unlike catholic or protestant easter, orthodox easter is considered the BIGGEST holiday of the year. One of the main differences between Eastern and Western Church was the meaning of Easter. So for Orthodoxy, the whole point of Christs’ torment was his rebirth, his resurection, the fact that you can be forgiven and start again.
Whcih is why one of the most important sermonts in Good saturday mass invites “those who fasted and those who didn;t, those who believe or don’t believe, those who erred and those who were righteous” to eat the holy bread, as a chance to reconciliate, reborn, and be forgiven.
Easter also means the begining of the Yearly Seremonial Cycle, (after it in the temples they start singing and reading sermons from the begining again).
anyway later on Easter Sunday early morning (around 2-3) we go back home and eat soup..special easter soup..it contains liver and intestines of the lamb..i know it sounds horrible but is2g it’s AMAZING! its so yummy
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Like…we roast lambs for easter so according to greek mindset, no food should be wasted so you gotta cook everything….
The idea is, if you’ve fasted for the whole 40 days..or even less…your stomach cannot stand to start eating meat and dairy ight away…so you start with the soup and eggs and you prepare it for the feast that follows.
9) Easter Feast: Now…this is an aspect i dislike..cause ppl get to over do it..it’s…a bad kind of greekness…. esp with bad songs and poor dancing.
But anyway, basically you roast your lamb, which is a symbol for christ (a lamb??yeah lamb is symbol for innocence and he was innocent) sacrifising for human sins. Also it’s a throwback to the Jewish Passover, for which i understand the sacrifice of a lamb is also a thing? Please forgive me this is stuff we learn at school so i don’t know how accurate they are.
Finally, if you’ve fasted, you can eat the damned “sweet breads’? idk how to call them in english? we call them Tsoureki but i know Jewish people also know them ? It’s this..kind of …pastry thing….. Idk how to describe it but it’s fucken DELICIOUS!!!!!
Easter Feast is not one of my best moments tbh i just love the Good Week somuch.
Oh! Also what remains of the lamb intestines and liver you make into Kokoretsi..once again don’t make a disgusted face it’s YUMMY!
Bonus feature: my fave custom in Corfu, it is a custome that incorporated the Venetian New Year custom or break pots to scare. Evil spirits (which in turn is a roman custom taken from ancient greece lol), because during Venetian colonisation greeks were only allowed tk celebrate Easter on thst day alone and under their supervision, till noon time.
So the custom ks to break brightly red painted pots, its the tomb breaking, scaring evil spirits and bad luck, red is both the blood and the colour of hope and good luck.
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 