Tag Archives: easter

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.

Swedish Myth: The Witches’ Pilgrimage

Nationality: Swedish and English
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 22, 2013
Primary Language: English

Contextual Data: I asked my friend if she had any stories or myths from when she was younger that she wouldn’t mind sharing with me. She mentioned that she was half Swedish, and so there were a lot of Swedish myths and legends that she had heard growing up and which she encountered whenever she went to Sweden. She mentioned one particular tradition that took place around Easter time, and I asked her to tell me more about it. The following is an exact transcript of her response.

Informant: “Okay. Well, I don’t know if it’s…It’s directly related to Easter, but it’s around Easter time, and I’m not really sure where—where it comes from, but my family lives, like really far in the north…So I remember when I was visiting there—I mean, I’ve been several times, but once I was in Sweden around the time of this holiday. And I don’t really remember what the holiday is called, but, um… It’s at the very least a northern Sweden thing—could be like a Swedish thing entirely. But, um, basically they have this legend that on the certain day of the year—it’s around Easter—all of the, um, witches in Sweden will fly to this like mountain in the north. And it’s called—I think it’s called Blue Mountain, but I’m not entirely sure, but it’s kind of like this witch pilgrimage that happens. And all of the witches, like, fly—like, you know, you could see, like, witches in the air going on, like, their migration to their…yearly convention at Blue Mountain. I don’t really know [Laughs]. So, um, I was really little and I woke up, and my parents woke me up and they were like, ‘[Name], [Name], wake up!’ And this woman walked into the cabin that we were staying in, and she was like all hunched over and she had these like, warts on her face [Gestures with hands to face] and she was missing teeth and she had like this shawl wrapped around her head. And she came over and she started, you know, kind of cackling at us, um, and gave me a bunch of, like, little chocolate covered eggs and, like, pinched my cheeks, and was generally kind of creepy [Laughs]. And then she left, and my parents were like, ‘Wow, [Name],’ um… ‘That’s one of the witches going to Blue Mountain.’ And I thought it was the coolest thing. Um… It actually turned out to be one of my Swedish family members whose name is Ann, and she just dressed up like, really well, and painted this, um, black stuff on her teeth so it would like she didn’t have—like she was missing some. But I think it’s something they kind of do for the kids up there, um, and I don’t know where it comes from. Maybe it’s like a throwback to sort of the pre-Christian times in Scandinavia. Um, but it coincides with Easter.”

Me: “So do you think it’s a celebration for the children? Or do you think there’s some other symbolic significance to it?”

Informant: “I think maybe at one point there was a greater symbolic significance—like sort of with Halloween, you know, you have…Like it used to not be necessarily about like, candy and kids running around dressed up, but it became a holiday that maybe was rooted—what was it, like  ‘sowin’ or ‘sowane’ or something, like that was the Pagan holiday. And then that became like, All Hallows’ Eve and then that became Halloween, and it sort of has been deconstructed to something that’s entertaining for kids because they can still kind of harness that, like, sense of magic that I think adults have kind of put out of their minds. Um, so I think at one point it was maybe more serious than it is, but I don’t know for sure ‘cause I have limited experience with it, but I think now, it’s definitely something that’s for, like, the children. It’s almost kind of like Halloween around Easter. You know, like a witch shows up and gives you candy.”

– End Transcript – 

My friend did a fairly thorough job of explaining the tradition and why it continues to exist — that it may have had a greater significance once upon a time (perhaps coming from pagan traditions or pagan mythology), but that nowadays, it is something that is sustained because of its appeal to children.