Traditions may differ from country to country, but Easter always brings with it a huge array of show-stopping food.
Note: For the sake of this article I will refer to Orthodox Easter as Pascha and the western version as Easter.
Ploughing through articles researching Easter I came to terms with the fact that it was a minefield because of the historical inconsistencies and religious controversies. So I will try and be as simple as I can.
So let’s go with the first bit of information that no-one can dispute. Easter is not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament which is the book that Christianity adheres to. We know that the early Christians were Jews who practised Passover as Christ did. Today we know that Pesach (Passover) is a spring festival as is Easter or Pascha.
Easter and Pascha are celebrated at different times, Easter is with the Gregorian calendar and Pascha is with the Julian calendar. The Eastern Orthodox Church also applies the formula that Pascha always falls after Passover (Pescha); the thinking behind that is that the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ took place after he entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. In the Western Churches Easter often precedes Passover by weeks.
Since the beginning of the 20th century a proposal to change this and have both Easters as a fixed holiday rather then a movable one has been circulated and in 1963 the Second Vatican Council agreed provided a consensus could be reached amongst Christian Churches and the second Sunday of April has been suggested as the most likely date – thus far nothing.
As noted, the Greek word for Easter is Pascha, almost identical to the word for Passover, it is the right word for Easter. Even western religious scholars tell us that this is the correct word. The Bible was first written in Greek from the spoken Aramaic. The word ‘Passover’ is what we call Pascha or Pescha, there is no mention of Easter in the bible. The word ‘Easter’ is a word for a pagan Anglo-Saxon festival; it is in honour of Eastra or Ostara a Teutonic fertility goddess and has no association at all with Christ, his death or Resurrection. This explains the rabbits, hares and eggs, as these were Easter’s symbols. Note that all Mediterranean countries use the Greek word Pascha and not Easter.
Hares and rabbits have long been symbols of fertility. The inclusion of the hare into Easter customs appears to have originated in Germany, where tales were told of an ‘Easter hare’ who laid eggs for children to find. German immigrants to America brought the tradition with them and spread it to a wider public. They also baked cakes for Easter in the shape of hares, and may have pioneered the practice of making chocolate bunnies and eggs.
Germans gave green eggs as gifts on Holy Thursday, and hung hollow eggs on trees. Austrians placed tiny plants around the egg and then boiled them. When the plants were removed, white patterns were created; I have memories of this practice amongst Greeks.
The egg has been venerated in all ancient cultures as a symbol of new life and fertility and was used in all spring festivals by Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.
Orthodox Christians in the Middle East and in Greece paint eggs bright red to symbolise the blood of Christ; hollow eggs (created by piercing the shell with a needle and blowing out the contents) are decorated with pictures of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other religious figures in Armenia.
The most elaborate Easter egg traditions appear to have emerged in Eastern Europe. In Poland and Ukraine, eggs are often painted silver and gold.
Pysanky (to design or write) eggs were created by carefully applying wax in patterns to an egg. The egg was then dyed, wax would be reapplied in spots to preserve that colour, and the egg was boiled again in other shades. The result was a multi-colour striped or patterned egg.
Greeks consider Pascha as the holiest festive season, where previously the spring festivities of revelry have occurred, called Apokries (spring carnival celebrations), leading into Sarakosti (Lent) and culminating in the biggest feast in the Orthodox calendar, Pascha Sunday (Easter Sunday) with one of the richest and most diverse dinner tables.
In most mainland areas of Greece a lamb is the roasted ‘sacrificial lamb’ which symbolises Christ on the cross. On most islands the lamb was roasted instead of skewered on the spit. I came across this interesting information about the tsoureki (τσουρέκι). The tradition of plaiting bread pre-dates Christianity. Pre-Christian Greeks baked braided bread (στρεπτίκιος αρτός) in circular form; it is the serpent swallowing its tail, one of the oldest symbols of nature repeating itself.
Tsoureki (τσουρέκι) as we know is a sweet, egg-enriched bread, rooted in the cuisines of Western and Central Asia. Other brioche-like breads can be found in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and examples of similar breads from other cultures are badnji kruh in Croatian cuisine, folar de páscoa in Portuguese cuisine, brioche in French, kulich in Russian cuisine, panettone in Italian cuisine and challah in Jewish cuisine. Wandering the streets of multicultural Melbourne a few years ago I came across an Italian bread shop during Easter that had the tsoureki with an egg in it, only this egg was not coloured like the Orthodox egg. I asked the owner about it and found out that it is a tradition from the south of the country – I would hazard a guess it was brought to this part of the world by the Byzantine Greeks who found themselves there and created ‘modern’ Greek-speaking colonies today known as ‘Grikos’.
source:Neos Kosmos
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 