Easter

Christ is Risen! says your Bulgarian language teacher, Indeed, He is Risen!, you struggle to reply - because you just learned the phrase that morning. Christianity is the official religion of Bulgaria and similar to in the States, Easter, along with Christmas, is one of the busiest days of the church. What isn't similar is how embraced the holiday is by the state, with city sponsored concerts, school bazaars, and giant pastel eggs hung on the trees along our main pedestrian street. During the midnight service held when Saturday becomes Easter Sunday, the mayor even stood by the priests helping to hand out the flame the faithful would take back to bless their homes. More on that in a moment!

First, the traditions here are a little different. As you may have noticed the date this year was a week later than in the States. Normally, Easter is celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon after March 21 (the vernal equinox). But the western church uses the Gregorian calendar, which has leap years to correct the inaccuracies of the Julian calendar, which I guess is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church uses the Gregorian calendar for fixed celebrations like Christmas, but the Julian calendar for the movable celebrations like Easter. This year the two dates were actually in alignment, but the Orthodox Church also maintains that Easter celebrations should be held the week after passover, if passover falls on the same scheduled weekend, which this year it did. So because passover celebrations occurred last weekend, Easter was celebrated this weekend.

So this Saturday, we went to a friend's house and dyed eggs. The first egg is always dyed red and is then used by the oldest woman in the house to make the sign of a cross on everyone 's foreheads, thereby blessing them. The eggs are decorated like in the states with special dye you mix with vinegar and also fancy stickers and this thing called 'crystal' which i have never seen but which gives the eggs a sparkly texture. I was quite proud of how our eggs looked when we were finished. The final touch was adding oil to make them shine.

On Easter Sunday, instead of hiding eggs, people have egg battles. This is what it sounds like. You take your egg and you smash it against someone else' egg, and the winner is the one whose egg hasn't broken. I think good luck and health will be won by whoever has the strongest egg. Eggs are also given to other people as gifts. They can be used in an "Easter salad" which is lettuce, radishes, oil, vinegar, cucumber, and sliced boiled eggs. Another easy, tasty dish is simply cutting and mixing the eggs with dill and oil.

On Saturday, we went to the midnight church service, which of course we couldn't understand, but we lit a candle, and held it as we walked around the church three times with hundreds of other Bourgas residents. (It reminded me of candle light services I have attended during Christmas, where the initial flame comes from the pastor and then spreads out to everyone else symbolizing the Light coming and illuminating the world.) After walking around the church, you take the flame home (people put cups around their flame to keep the wind from blowing then out) and you walk into every room with the lit candle to spread a blessing for the year.

Easter morning, we went to a presentation of traditional dancing and the setting out of special Easter bread at the ethnographic museum. Bulgarians bake a very sweet bread with intricate designs on it that is broken and shared with everyone. Our friends from a nearby village whose children do traditional craft projects had invited us. We joined in a little traditional dancing, tasted the bread, and visited the museum. Easter is a relaxed time, spent with families and everyone has the day off of work. In fact, even the Monday after Easter is a holiday from work - we kept the spirit of Easter, spring, and new life alive by planting some flowers and herbs in our new balcony flower boxes.