137. Easter

I know Easter was a long time ago, but it was such a big event and so interesting, that I think the story is better told late than never.

My host family’s house was full for Easter.  Easter is one of largest celebrated holidays in Moldova.  There were some interesting differences, but the main reason of celebrating this holiday was the same here and in the US.

I am use to going to sunrise services, but my host mom was at the Orthodox Church from 11pm Saturday night through 5am Easter Morning because she is the choir director.  I went a little later, at about 2am, with my host brother and host brother-in-law.  First we went to the church and participated in some of the service.  It was beautiful because there were candles everywhere and the church was full of people.  At about 4am, the service ended and everyone lined the streets in front of the church with food set out to be blessed.  The priest and the choir would walk up and down the street singing, praying and spraying holly water to bless the people and the food.

Blessed food

After that, we all went home and I was crawling in bed as the sun was rising.  Easter morning there was not a lot of movement in the house until close to noon.  Easter day we did not eat any hot food.  All of the food was prepared the day before.  The food was great, we ate rachituri (see past post), lamb, sausage patties, boiled eggs, beet salad, egg and crab salad, and a few other things.

I was happy to see the colored eggs are also made here, but I was slightly disappointed to find out that they did not do Easter egg hunts.  But, they do have a different tradition that I never took part of.  Two people eat take an egg, one person wraps his hand around the egg with only the top showing, the second person then hits the other egg once and tries to crack it.  In my family this activity was for fun, but I have heard of other families that had a prize for the last egg standing unbroken.  The morning of Easter it is also traditional to wash you face using a colored egg. 

Easter meal