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Easter in Romania and England. Roşca Georgiana. Easter in Romania.
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Easter in Romania and England Roşca Georgiana
Easter is celebrated with great zeal and enthusiasm throughout the world. On the occasion of Easter, the Christian community presents in every nook and corner of the world celebrates this day as the day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ after crucifixion. The celebration of Easter is marked by morning services at the church and feasting and party in the evening. In almost all the countries around the world, the festivities of Easter are more or less the same. However, certain specific traditions of the place make the Easter at a particular country stand a little different from the other. Here in this article we have explored the Easter celebrations in Romania.
Easter in Romania is celebrated according to the rituals of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Easter entire season consists of Flowers Saturday (Lazarus’ Saturday), Palm Day (Flowers Day), Great Thursday, Great Friday, Easter, The Small Fountain and Good People’s Easter. Each of these has small interesting rituals. The Easter celebration goes on for a long week and finally wraps with Good People’s Easter celebrated in honour of the ancient spirits.
The Friday before the Easter is called the Great Friday or the Friday of sufferings, as it is the day when Jesus was crucified. On Saturday, people go to church for the midnight mass, taking with them a bowl of Pasca, eggs and steak, where these aliments are blessed by the clergy. On returning home from the mass, people first eat some of the sanctified aliments and only then the rest.
Starting with Holy Thursday, people start painting eggs in a multitude of colours. The predominant colour is red, but other colours are also applied - yellow, green, blue and even black. Decorated eggs or 'ouă încondeiate' are an integral part of Easter celebration in Romania. The eggs are decorated using a type of thin and round sticks called chişiţă made of beech wood.
The special Easter cake, known as Pasca, is baked on Great Thursday. The Pasca can have a round shape (reminding little Jesus' diapers) or a rectangular one (the shape of his grave). The shells of the eggs used for the Pasca are thrown in a river. This action stems from the ancient belief that the shells are taken by the river to the country of the Good People, announcing them the Easter has came.
In some regions (Bucovina, Transylvania), there is a tradition called "the wetting". On Monday morning, the boys take a bucket of water and go to the houses of the unmarried girls. If they found them sleeping, the boys throw water on them. As it is believed that those girls will marry soon, they reward the boys who had wetted them by giving them the most beautiful decorated eggs and Pasca or cake. However, all the Easter traditions span around the historical fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God is alive.
The Eastern Church and Western Church have separate dates for Easter. Occasionally, Easter falls on the same Sunday (in 2010 and 2011, we celebrated together), but usually the celebrations are separated by a week or two. This means that in any given year, you might find Roman Catholic Hungarians in the area celebrating Easter one Sunday, while the Orthodox Romanians might be celebrating a week or two later. In 2005, the dates were spread very far apart: the Western churches celebrated on March 27 and the Orthodox churches on May 1.
Romanian evangelicals go with the majority of Romanians and choose to celebrate with the Orthodox. But Romanian evangelical churches in the West (in the United States or Great Britain) generally celebrate together with the majority of Christians in their area.
Why the different dates? Both the Eastern and Western churches claim to celebrate Easter on “the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox.” The problem is that Western church uses the Gregorian calendar to establish this Sunday, while the Eastern Church uses the older, Julian calendar. When the different definitions of “vernal equinox” and “full moon” are taken into consideration, it is no wonder that the two church traditions do not come to a mutual understanding.
Furthermore, the Orthodox Church always places Easter after the Jewish Passover, which means that the date may sometimes be the first Sunday in May. Easter observance in the Western Church often precedes the Passover by weeks.
The celebration of Easter in England began well before the arrival of Christianity. In the Pre-Christian Era, the festival was observed in honour of the Anglo Saxon Goddess - Eostre. Today, in England, the festivities of Easter begin with Lent, which falls on Ash Wednesday, and lasts for 40 days. Easter celebration in England is a low-key affair, as people prefer religious observations as compared to joyous merriment. Easter is an occasion for sober worship and quiet family gatherings without the extravagance that accompanies festivals like Christmas. Nevertheless, spring time celebrations are gleefully observed in rural land of the country. Easter eggs, games, feasting and fun activities all are part of the festivities, even though the main celebrations are seen in churches of the country.
Palm SundayThe celebration of Easter in England commences a week before the day, to be specific, on Palm Sunday. The name has its origin in the Roman times, when it was a customary to welcome royalty by waving the branches of palm tree. According to the legends, Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and therefore, people welcomed him by laying a carpet of palm branches in the streets and holding one in each of their hands, to wave them to the lord. Even today, people in England go in parades on Palm Sunday, by carrying the palm branches. The palm branches are often made into garlands and crosses, to use them to decorate the church.
Morris DanceIn many parts of England, professional troupes of dancers perform Morris Dance on Easter Sunday. These troupes of dancers, almost exclusively male, perform old spring dances to frighten away the veil spirits of winter. The dancers clad themselves in beautiful white shorts, red sashes, black trousers and straw hats, with lots of flowers and streamers. Red and green ribbons and little bells are tied onto the dancers, to complete the look.
Easter In VillagesEnglish villages, with their quaint charm, provide the perfect backdrop for witnessing traditional Easter traditions of England. During the ceremonious occasion of Easter, the village church would be bedecked with fresh flowers. Traditional Easter egg hunts are organized in the villages, wherein the Easter Bunny hides Easter eggs for the local children to find. The village bakery would offer fragrant hot cross buns, warm from the oven, and Simnel cakes, with home made 'marzipan' (a paste made with almond and sugar, generally used as icing for cakes and pastries).
The meaning of Easter is Jesus Christ's victory over death. His resurrection symbolizes the eternal life that is granted to all who believe in Him. The meaning of Easter also symbolizes the complete verification of all that Jesus preached and taught during His three-year ministry. If He had not risen from the dead, if He had merely died and not been resurrected, He would have been considered just another teacher or Rabbi. However, His resurrection changed all that and gave final and irrefutable proof that He was really the Son of God and that He had conquered death once and for all.
However, Easter did not always symbolize Christ's resurrection from the dead and the meaning of Easter was quite different than what Christians celebrate today. The feast day of Easter was originally a pagan celebration of renewal and rebirth. Celebrated in the early spring, it honoured the pagan Saxon goddess Eastre. When the early missionaries converted the Saxons to Christianity, the holiday, since it fell around the same time as the traditional memorial of Christ's resurrection from the dead, was merged with the pagan celebration, and became know as Easter. The meaning of Easter was also changed to reflect its new Christian orientation.
Today, the meaning of Easter, for million of Christians, is that of honouring and recognizing Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead, and His glorious promises of eternal life for all who believe in Him.
