Tag Archives: easter

Paștile Blajinilor (The Easter of the Gentle People)

This first story is about what we would call here (Romania) Easter of the Gentle People. Gentle as in nice, kind, you know? And one week after Orthodox Easter, uh during the first Sunday, people come out, out of their homes, and they go in the fields and spread uhhhh eggs and they try to make as much noise as possible because apparently they say that there is such a people, the gentle people, that lives in an unseen area. And these people are incapable to harm anyone. So all the, the whole country, this is a umm I don’t know, this is present everywhere in the country, not only in one specific area. So the only problem that they have is that they cannot calculate the date of Easter. So that is why people must make a lot of noise to signify that this is finally Easter day. In Romania it is called Paștile Blajinilor. It means gentle, kind, nice, sweet. 

Background: This informant has lived in Romania their whole life and is very interested in the folk traditions of various countries. They found this piece of folklore from other people in Romania.

Interpretation: This tale shows the blending of religious tradition with folk tradition. The tradition of Easter Sunday is blended with folk belief about fairies in order to create this holiday. The reason that the gentle people in the story cannot calculate the date of Easter could be connected to how in many tales about fairies, time moves differently in the land of the fairies than on earth. This may be the result of christianization of local folk belief in fairies in order to show that even they believe in Easter and affirm Christianity.

German Easter-Water Ritual

Context:

HH is a retired former housewife who lives in a Westergellersen, a very small village in northern Germany.

Main Piece:

“Am Ostersonntag holen Frauen Wasser aus einer Quelle. Sie dürfen dabei nicht gesehen werden und es darf währenddessen nicht gesprochen werden. Dem Wasser werden heilende Kräfte nachgesagt und es soll die Fruchtbarkeit fördern. Mädchen erhoffen sich Schönheit und Verliebte bespritzen ihren Traumpartner mit dem Osterwasser um diesen für sich zu gewinnen.”

Translation:

On Easter Sunday, the women get water from the spring. They are not allowed to be seen during this and it is not allowed to speak. The water is said to have healing powers and is supposed to promote fertility. Girls wish beauty for themselves and those in love spray their dream partner with the Easter Water to win him for themselves.

Analysis:

This tradition follows step with Easter’s general association with fertility. The women gathering the water in silence, without being allowed to be seen, also aligns with some marriage customs that deal with purity. Since this custom was collected from Westergellersen, a very rural German village, from a grandmother who participated in this ritual when she was young, it follows that societal standards around purity, fertility, and gender roles were much more strict and strongly enforced than they are now.

Spraying the Easter Water on the subject of affection is a form of magic folk belief that falls into the Homeopathic category. I interpret the Easter Water to be symbolic of fertility, as Easter, also connected to eggs and bunnies/rabbits, has a general thematic connection with fertility. So, splashing a potential partner with Easter Water creates a metaphor for the future fertility of the relationship. This metaphor arguably even symbolizes a reversal of the typical conception process, as here, the woman splashes the man with a fertile liquid instead of the other way around.

German Easter Fire Tradition

Context:

AH grew up in Westergellersen, a small village in northern Germany and attended these Easter fires throughout her childhood.

Main Piece:

“Leute in vor allem ländlichen Gegenden sammeln Holzmaterial und Buschwerk und türmen es möglichst hoch auf. Es soll weithin sichtbar sein. Es entsteht ein Wettstreit um das höchste Feuer. Am Karsamstag wird es angezündet. Das Dorf versammelt sich dann um das Feuer, es gibt Bier, Glühwein und Würstchen.”

Translation:

People from all the surrounding rural areas gather wooden material and shrubbery and pile it as high as possible. It should be able to be seen from far and wide. There is a contest for the highest fire. On Karsamstag (Holy Saturday, the day before Easter) it is lit. The village gathers around the fire, there’s beer, mulled wine, and sausages.

Analysis:

This part of the Easter festival celebration in northern Germany seems very useful for promoting unity and connection within a town. Because the villages compete for the tallest fire, the one that can be seen from the farthest distance away, this creates an in-group out-group boundary. Also, since gathering the materials for the highest bonfire takes time and work, the townspeople must work together, as they wouldn’t be able to achieve this highest fire on their own. Then, on the evening before Easter, when the fire is lit, this festival ritual turns into a communal gathering place for the village people. Beer, mulled wine, and sausages are all extremely common foods in northern Germany, and are generally associated with any festivals and gatherings, or seen as something like ‘fair food.’

Watergate Salad

Text/Context

EM – Watergate salad is a tradition in my family that has been a controversy for years and years. Every Easter, my Aunt brings a dish that mainly consists of marshmallows and is dyed green. The name of this concoction is Watergate salad and every year my aunt puts it on the dinner table arguing that it is meant as a side dish with dinner. Everyone else argues that it’s a dessert. The same arguments are made every year and the issue has never been resolved to this day.
Interviewer – What are some of the arguments your family makes for and against Watergate salad being a salad instead of a dessert?
EM – My aunt argues that it’s green, so its a salad. Everyone else says it’s sweet, made of marshmallows and jello, so it’s a dessert.
Interviewer – Does anyone besides your aunt eat it as a side at dinner, or do people wait until dessert, or do people not even eat it and it’s kinda just a prop?
EM – A couple of my cousins sometimes take a minuscule scoop at dinner. Most other wait til dessert.
Interviewer – Is it only an Easter meal?
EM – Ya, only Easter.
Interviewer – Do you know any other families who have a similar recipe at their Easter meal?
EM – I’ve never heard of anyone else having it.
Interviewer – Is it always present at Easter, and is it mainly a yearly joke that everyone still enjoys, or is this serious debate?
EM – It’s always at Easter when my aunt comes. And it’s both a joke and a debate that still gets laughs.
Interviewer – Does anyone else know the recipe or just your aunt?
EM – As far as I know, my aunt is the only one.

Analysis

This family’s traditional dish is only for Easter, so it was not collected in a natural context. However, the informant and I were talking about favorite foods, which veered into dishes we eat only at certain times or events.
Watergate salad is named for its controversial status as a “salad” or a “dessert.” This folk group consists only of the informant’s immediate and extended family, and close friends who attend their Easter dinner.
The dish is not a regular recipe meant only to be eaten. It is also a joke. The family engages in playful debate about the salad and may refuse to eat it during or after dinner, but it gets eaten nonetheless. The dish brings the family closer together, because it is an inside joke, and always gets laughs no matter the stance.

Easter egg game (Maseehh kom) – Arabic Folk Game

Context:

She learned this game from her family when she was around two years old, in Egypt. She said that the reason they commemorate Jesus’s resurrection with cracking eggs is because Jesus emerged from the tomb like a chick emerging from an egg.

Game:

This game requires two people (P1 and P2), each with a hard-boiled Easter egg.

P1 holds their egg above P2’s egg, and both of the tops are exposed and facing each other. P1 says “Maseehh kom” (“Messiah has risen”), and P2 says “Hakan kom” (“Indeed risen”). P1 then slams their egg’s top into P2’s egg’s top. Whoever’s egg is not broken is the winner of that round.

P2 then holds their egg above P1’s egg, and both of the bottoms are exposed and facing each other. P2 says “Maseehh kom,” and P1 says “Hakan kom.” P2 then slams their egg’s bottom into P1’s egg’s bottom. Whoever’s egg is not broken is the winner of that round.

If there is a tie at the end, they repeat the game with new eggs.

(I added the P1 and P2 distinctions, as well as the translations, to the original explanation for the sake of clarity)

Thoughts:

I remember learning this game from my parents when I was a kid, and I think that it is a clever way to celebrate the Resurrection with the prominent tradition of Easter eggs. We would first play it in the household, then again when we would meet with the whole family later that Sunday (pre-COVID). Each time we played it, it was in a tournament style: each person would choose a colored egg from a container full of them, and would face off in brackets. Not only was it a way to remember that “Maseehh kom,” but it was a way to bring the family closer together (very important to Arabs).

For other games associated with Easter eggs, see the following excerpt: Newall, Venetia. “Easter Eggs.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 80, no. 315, 1967, pp.27-28. https://doi.org/10.2307/538415.