Tag Archives: easter

Easter in Kentucky

Nationality: American
Age: 58
Occupation: Programmer
Residence: Carlisle, MA
Performance Date: 3/19/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French

Informant Bio: Informant is my mother.  She was born in West Virginia and spent her childhood moving around the country, eventually settling in Massachusetts.  She was exposed to many different traditions as she moved around the country as a child and still carries some with her to this day.

 

Context: I was interviewing my mother about traditions, stories and rituals she remembers from her childhood.

 

Item: “Growing up in the Kentucky hills, Easter celebration is special.  Everyone dresses up in beautiful new spring clothes; the girls wore hats and white gloves.  First we went to church.  As a child it seemed to take FOREVER.  We had to wait for the service to end, the socializing after the service to end, AND THEN the good stuff started.  We got to go to my grandfather’s house.  He hid Easter eggs all over his yard. He had a HUGE yard and he loved to watch his grandchildren running all over frantically trying to find the most eggs!  We got a new basket to hold our eggs each year.  Also, my grandfather always gave my grandmother a chocolate rabbit as a gift!  Also, she didn’t like chocolate; but, it was his tradition, he always did it, and they laughed about it each year”.

 

Analysis: Easter seemed to be a very religious event for the adults but not for the kids.  Like Christmas, it seemed to bring people together (but to not as great an extent).  Easter also served as a way to usher in the changing of seasons, with the wearing of spring-type clothes, hats (for the sun) and white gloves (a southern tradition, but again showing the coming sun, brightness and purity that spring brings).

 

The grandfather’s house serves as the rendezvous point for the entire family, showing the prominent and important position that elders held in Southern families.  The inclusion of eggs and an egg hunt is prevalent throughout many Christian cultures and seems to define the whole experience for the children.  This may have served as a way to blend tradition and religious context with fun in a way that would reinforce the message about Jesus Christ while helping the children have an enjoyable experience and make memories after sitting through the lengthy Church service earlier in the day.

Easter in the Greek Orthodox Church

Nationality: White
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/13
Primary Language: English

“Okay, so, I’m Greek Orthodox, um, and there’s a number of, like, traditions in the Greek Orthodox church that, um, are not found in a lot of other Christian churches. Um, Greek Orthodox is very similar to Catholicism, um, maybe a litter stricter, um and on Easter… First of all Easter is not with the Western Calendar, um, they go off of a different calendar, um, and so their Easter is not, um, always the same Sunday as, um, regular Easter, I guess, or what most people think of… the Western Easter. Um, or the Easter found in most other Christianities. Um, and so it’s normally, like, 3 or 4 weeks after, sometimes it’s before, a couple times it’s, like, coincided, um, but so you– we have lent and everything, similar to Catholicism, um, but you’re not supposed to eat meat at all, there’s no meat at all, it’s not just a no-Friday thing, uh, and, um, so, during the week of— I guess during Holy Week, leading up to Easter you’re supposed to… So Easter is always on a Sunday. But the Orthodox Church does their Easter service on Saturday night and it’s normally at, like, ten o’clock Saturday night and it goes to about 12:30am, um, sometimes later, um, and afterwards at the Church there’s normally, like, a big feast. Because you haven’t eaten meat the whole time and you come at, you know, one o’clock in the morning and everyone’s eating and has the big, like, breakfast celebration. Um, and then the next day you’ll, like, get with your family and have another big, massive feast with a lot of meat, um, so that’s fun. And normally the services, like the Mass services, last at least two hours, um because its different in, like, Catholicism the, the priests have to, um, they prepare all the communion stuff beforehand, before everyone gets to mass. Um, in the Orthodox Church, they do it in front of you. So when you get there, you’re watching the priest set up and they have a lot of little, like, rituals they have to do um in order to prepare the communion, um, so that’s why it lasts so long. Partly because in the beginning, it’s just a lot of rituals and things like that and a lot of people come in, like, halfway through the service so it’s not uncommon to see people coming in like halfway through um and then normally the homily is a little longer than it would be in a, um, Catholic church.”

 

My informant is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, a faith she inherited from her mother’s family. My informant is well versed on the practices in the Catholic Church as she attended a Catholic high school. Her understanding of additional branches of Christianity can be contributed to her father’s Protestant faith. My informant feels most connected to the Greek Orthodox Church and remains connected to her faith, even on the USC campus.

As a student who also attended Catholic school, I find it interesting that religions who are very closely related belief-wise have so many differences in practice. The manifestation of faith is as diverse as the people who practice it.

 

The calendar that my informant was referring to is actually two calendars. The Greek Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar.

Read more about the calendar of the Orthodox church here:

http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7070

 

 

The Egg Game

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 12, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

Every Easter Allison’s family meet together to share a meal. Before the meal starts they play a game. She’s not sure what it’s called, but explained the premise. Each family is served a hard boiled egg at their place at the table. Each family member takes their egg in their hand, so that all but the tip of the egg is covered. Two relatives tap the end of the eggs together. The person who’s egg shell breaks loses, and they are out of the game. This continues until only one egg remains intact.

Before the game, people go around the table, switching eggs in order to get what they think is the hardest egg, therefore the least likely to crack. Allison told an anecdote about her grandfather, who she described as a “jokester,” playing this game. One year he took a decorative wooden egg, closed his hand around it so only the tip was showing, just as everyone does, and played the game. He cracked every egg in every round using the wooden egg, and revealed to the family after he had won that he had been using a wooden egg.

The game has a special meaning because it is only performed at Easter and only in the context of a family meal.

Food: Bacalhoada

Nationality: American-white, Portuguese, and Brazilian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Not fluent in any other languages

My informant told me her grandparents come from the Azores a group of islands off the coast of Portugal. Ever year around Easter, on Good Friday, her grandfather cooks a dish called Bacalhoada. It is basically a dish formulated from potatoes, fish, hard-boiled eggs, olives, onions, and whatever else is available in the kitchen. This tradition comes from the Portuguese sailors. Since they sent a lot of time at sea they didn’t have access to fresh foods. They would catch a whole bunch of fish because they were never sure when get would get more food. So they dried and they would rehydrate them with milk later. For this dish they would have the fish and they would then throw-in any vegetables or food that they happened to find on the ship.  Even during war-time they would take the time to make this dish every Good Friday. According to my informant the recipe varies from year to year. Part of the concept of the dish is to put in whatever you have available. My informant says that she enjoys the tradition because she doesn’t fell she has that many. She enjoys the tradition but not always the food that goes with it.

It is interesting that the informant places more emphasis on the history of the tradition than the food itself. It was probably because she didn’t know the recipe off the top of her head but the history of this dish still seems more important. Especially since the recipe seems to change yearly because that’s how the dish was originally made. That might be why the informant follows the tradition even though she’s not all that keen on the actual food. The history behind this dish gives it importance so not practicing it might seem disingenuous.

Easter games and traditions

Nationality: Romanian Italian American
Age: 53
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/17/2013
Primary Language: English

My informant came from a mixed background.  One side of her family was Romanian and the other side was Italian.  During Easter, she would take part in traditions from both groups.  One of the Romanian traditions she would partake in was called Choking Eggs, where two people make painted eggs and then hard-boiled them.  Each person would then take their egg and smash them against each other until one of them broke.  The value of winning was increased if your egg was especially pretty.  One of the Italian traditions involved playing a game called Bachi in the lawn and the game involved throwing marbles.  Also an Italian Easter tradition involved making all sorts of breads.  One such bread was a woven bread filled with breakfast foods like hardboiled eggs and salami and such.