Easter

Even church ministers recognize that in Romania, Easter is not only a Christian holiday, but, due to the fact that it falls during the period of transition from cold to warming, combines and carries on many pre-Christian practices, customs and traditions. This symbiosis between Christian and pagan led to Easter holidays becoming something unique in the calendar series of other church holidays.

From Good Thursday, the men suspended their household work, the women began to prepare ritual dishes - baking Easter (kulichi), as well as especially baked kalach (cozonac). On this day, red Easter eggs were painted, and pysanks were also painted. In Romania, a traditional Easter dish is roasted Easter lamb. All these dishes were prepared in the oven.

What can be added or emphasized here are some features of Easter preparation. In western Romania, the attitude towards ritual food is different from that seen in eastern Romania. If on the territory of Moldova they attach greater importance to the preparation of Easter, then in western Romania - Easter lamb. The same ambiguous attitude is observed to the consecrated Easter. We'll talk about that a little bit later.

We will tell you about the peculiarities of preparing Easter dishes. Easter is decorated with a cross, often braided in pigtails, and the space between the pigtails of the cross is laid out with cottage cheese. In different places in different ways - in some sweet, in others salty cottage cheese, in the third mixed raisins, and on top, most often - colored millet, in some areas - poppy grains. In many areas, women add walnut to Easter itself, for the smell - nutmeg, rum, oranges or lemons, often raisins. In some areas, in order to make Easter yellower, a finely grated pumpkin is added.

Another curious dish inherent in Romania and Moldova - "babele" - Easter baba, specially cooked in the oven sweet dish of pasta, noodles, which were poured into special molds. In some areas it is a mandatory Easter dish, in others it is not prepared at all. I must say that since there was a custom to cook a grandmother, then, of course, there was a dish of the "opposite sex" - grandfather. But, unlike the grandmother, the dish, which was sweet, and after cooking necessarily had to remain white, the grandfather was sour or salty in taste, and the color was necessarily brownish, in general, dark. But there are differences, in other villages the grandfather is sweet, and the grandmother is sour, but the color is still the same.

We talk about this because these dishes are traditionally sanctified and consecrated at Easter in the church. But, there are many features of the consecration of Easter dishes, they differ not only from one geographical zone to another, but also from village to village. There is no way to talk about everyone, just the most curious. Curious are the different approach to sacred dishes and especially to Easter. So, in the eastern part of Romania, the consecration of food is paid the most attention, in the western part, this ritual is approached, one might even say formally. For example, in many villages and even cities, Easter, intended for consecration, is baked by specially appointed women, to whom the whole village carries the ingredients necessary for baking (or raise money to buy these ingredients), and these women bake Easter for the whole village. Just don’t think that we are talking about hundreds or many Easters. Not at all, since after the consecration of Easter, which is held in many villages on Holy Thursday, the consecrated Easter is cut into small pieces and distributed to parishioners in small portions. This phenomenon is almost not observed in the eastern part of Romania, where each hostess bakes a lot of pastas, so that it is enough for family members, but more to present them as a gift to neighbors, guests and so on.

In the ritual of consecration, most of Romania adheres to the custom of consecrating pasca and other dishes either on Saturday evening or after the Easter service on the day of the Resurrection of Christ, that is, on Sunday. There are a number of features about what dishes hostesses bring to church and why. We cannot describe them in this article for a number of reasons, but we will talk about them on our website, in the section dedicated to the “Experience of research of world cultures” (http://darovanie.ru). Here we will tell in a few words about the rites performed in Romania with consecrated dishes.

Tradition prescribed a mandatory presence at the Easter night service, and especially at the morning, Sunday, after which the priest consecrated the dishes brought with him by the parishioners. Mandatory in the Easter basket were pasca, "babele" (babs) - a symbol of righteous life, salt, sugar, lard and money. In many areas, garlic was mandatory, and, of course, Easter eggs, primarily red, as pysanky had a special purpose. There are also a number of dishes that will be distributed to the poor.

On Easter, Sunday night, the girls tried not only to visit the church, but also to wash the tongue of the church bell with clean spring water, and then use the remains of this water for washing at the time of sunrise, on the day of resurrection, to be beautiful all the coming year, and to them all the guys ran away, as well as people run to the ringing of the Easter bell in church.

Other obligatory customs were the injunction that in the morning, before proceeding to the meal, to perform a “wash” with a red consecrated Easter egg, in order to gain the same health and healthy red blush of the face, as this consecrated Easter egg has. There are many other interesting customs. These customs are still observed. In the worst case, once – on a Sunday after returning home from the Easter liturgy, in the best – the next three days. But, according to custom - until the day of Pentecost, or at least until the day of remembrance of the dead, which in Romania is called "Easter of the Blessed" (which we will talk separately).