EASTER

IN THE GREEK TRADITION

In Greece the week prior to Holy Week, known as Palm Week, is frequently referred to as Dumb Week, because throughout this period no service is held in the churches, with the exception of Friday, the eve of the Saturday of Lazarus.

On Saturday the children wander around the houses of the village intoning particular tunes known as lazarakia that tell about Lazarus’s resurrection. While doing this, they frequently carry a little image in which the event is represented. In Macedonia, Thrace and Central Greece only teenage girls seem to be allowed to perform this ancient rite. One of them holds a wooden pestle enveloped in gaily tinted tatters. This item looks like an infant in swaddling-bands. In other regions of Greece, Lazarus is symbolized by a distaff or a doll bedecked with flowers, tatters and fringes. The inhabitants of Crete construct a cross of reeds and adorn it with garlands of lemon-blossoms and red flowers picked in the fields.

Palm Sunday has been thus called to celebrate the jubilant advent of Christ in Jerusalem not long after the resurrection of Lazarus, when the citizens of that city covered his way with palm branches as a sign of reverence.

The habit of dispensing bay or myrtle twigs on Palm Sunday dates back to the 9th century when it was first established by the Church and, once it was accepted by the population, it progressively was characterized by a more elegiac nature. Later on, the people themselves provided the church with laurels, myrtle and palm crosses; and eventually they began to invoke the fertilizing power dwelling in the evergreen leaves of the plants, pleading that it should pass into the brides of the year. This was achieved by touching the newly wed young-ladies with the vaya.

Holy Week is time of universal mourning and demands a more rigorous form of fasting. In certain parts of Greece, as in Kastoria, absolutely no food is eaten on the first three days of Holy Week, save a titch of water at nightfall. This tenet is kept particularly by women.

In the course of the Holy Week two services are held each day: the morning service is chanted on the evening of Palm Sunday, when the bells start chiming from the church tower in order to invite the population to go to the morning services celebrated on Holy Monday. The evening services held from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday are all called Nymphioi (Bridegrooms) because during the service the icon of Christ is brought in front of the iconostasis, while the choir starts to sing the hymn “Behold the Bridegroom cometh in the middle of the night”. On Tuesday evening the service is largely devoted to the reading of a passage in the Gospel alluding to the episode of Mary Magdalene pouring myrrh over Christ’s feet

Wednesday is devoted primarily to the ceremony of the anointment of the faithful. The anointment occurs subsequent to the service. The priest anoints all the people in church with oil on the forehead, chin, cheeks and hands.

The preparations for Easter generally commence in the morning of Maundy Thursday. Among other things, that is when the Easter eggs are dyed red. The fact that the color red is generally believed to have a protecting influence, might also explain another Easter custom which consists in hanging pieces of red material out of the windows. Thus on Maundy Thursday the inhabitants of Messimvria in Northern Thrace, used to dip a cloth in the dye with the eggs and hang it out of the window for forty days. This cloth was then used for many magical purposes – exorcism, etc.

With the exception of the dying of the eggs, Maundy Thursday is also the day when the Easter rolls are traditionally cooked in the oven. They are customarily prepared using a surplus of yeast left over from the previous Wednesday. The names for these rolls may differ, and in accordance with their shapes they care called “dolls”, “baskets” etc.

In Thrace there is a rather atypical belief with reference to the red eggs of Easter. The eggs that hens lay on Maundy Thursday are dyed, wrapped in a kerchief in the evening and placed under the lectern from which the priest will read the Twelve Gospels. After the eggs have been blessed in such a way, the womenfolk bring them home, where they leave one of them on the iconostasis shrine. It is believed that if this egg had been laid by a black hen, in seven years’ time it will become an talisman as powerful as the Holy Cross. Pregnant women wear it to protect against the menace of miscarriage. This Thracian custom is based in an earlier type of magical content, the so-called aetitis (eagle) stone, which women wore exactly for the same purpose. In ancient times it was believed that eagles (aetos=eagle) brought this stone and placed it in their nest ‘for which reason it is called eagle stone…’, as Aelian observes (1,35): ‘it is also said that this stone is good for pregnant women because it is an enemy of abortion’.

But regardless of these festive preparations, Maundy Thursday continues to remain a revered occasion held in special honor in Greece. During the service celebrated in the morning in every church the priests read the Gospel chapter that refers to the Mystiko Deipno, or Last Supper. In the evening, the service is totally dedicated to the Passion and is known as the Liturgy of the Twelve Gospels, since the priest reads twelve different passages illustrating the Passion of Christ. The priests are dressed in black robes and the churches are bedecked in black, purple and white. When the fifth passage – alluding to the Crucifixion itself – has been read, the priest emerges from the sanctuary (the Vima), carrying a great wooden crucifix which he places in the center of the church. The faithful decorate it with garlands of flowers. Finally the priest reads the remaining seven passages alluding to the death and burial of Jesus. The service finishes very late at night.

Good Friday is a day during which fast and abstention from work are total. The whole day is spent paying attention to the Descent from the Cross and participating to the procession of the Epitaphios (Christ’s funeral). At noontime, when the Descent from the Cross occurs, women begin to decorate the pall (a piece of gold-embroidered cloth representing the body of Jesus, and upon which the dead Christ is to be placed. Violets, roses, all the flowers of springtime are woven into garlands and bouquets and pinned to the pall, until it is factually stifled in flowers. The faithful kiss the frame of the Epitaphios and then move on bending down on it, hoping to be touched by its Grace. When night falls the Epitaphios is carried out of the church and then starts the funeral procession. First come the banners and the cross followed by the Bier which is in its turn followed by the priests. In largeer towns the procession is preceded by a band playing funeral marches and by government officials. In Athens, the Epitaphios is followed by the Archbishop, by some Government representatives and by the Head of the State. The multitude of people that follow holding candles, looks like a broad flickering river streaming through the streets of the city. The procession halts at every square and crossroad for the priests to say a short prayer. In the villages the Epitaphios procession takes on a simpler and more picturesque aspect, but is utterly poignant.

The mournful gloom of Good Friday starts to haul up on Holy Saturday with the evening service of the First Resurrection, which is held in the morning of Holy Saturday. In the evening the faithful set in motion to go to church wearing their best cloths, possibly new ones, especially children. They are carrying white candles instead of the funeral yellow ones they were holding on Good Friday. Children are given special candles decorated with ribbons, artificial flowers and gold thread. It is customary for young men to send their betrothed several presents and a candle decorated with white and pink ribbons.

When the service commences, the church is faintly lit. But a moment comes when even this dim lighting disappears: the church sinks into darkness, symbolizing the darkness of the grave and the shadows of death. Unexpectedly the door of the Vima swings open and the priest emerges holding a lighted candle chanting: “Come ye, partake of the never-setting Light and glorify Christ who is risen from the dead”. Then the faithful light their candles from the priest’s, and each one passes it on to his neighbor until the whole church is blazing with the new vivifying splendor of the novel light. After that the priest, followed by the flock of the chanting faithful holding banners, leaves the church and gets on a scaffolding erected outside the church for this purpose. At this point he reads the Gospel passage illustrating the Resurrection. At last he exultingly starts chanting the psalm Christos anesti (Christ is risen). The faithful accompany him swaying their candles rhythmically at the same time as the bells of the church chime joyfully; guns and fireworks are left off while ships at anchor sound their sirens. Each faithful turns to his neighbor saying Christos anesti and receives in return the reply Alithos anesti (He is risen indeed), after which they exchange the kiss of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection of Christ is a sign of love among men of goodwill, a sign expressed by the kiss of the Resurrection which in some villages is known as the kiss of love.

Upon returning home from the midnight service of the Resurrection, everyone attempts to keep his candle alight till he reaches his house. First he traces the sign of the cross over the threshold of his dwelling with the newly lit candle which is afterward used to rekindle the oil lamp burning in front of the small family iconostasis.

Besides after having reached home from church people must share a late repast constituted by a variety of traditional dishes, such as Magiritsa, a soup made of lamb’s intestines boiled with rice and dill, cheese-pies or milk-pies (Epirus), etc. The first course always consists of red eggs. And it is a profusely widespread custom to knock one egg against another. Whoever is able to crack somebody else’s egg has the right to demand the cracked egg for himself.

On Easter Sunday it is customary to have a meal of roasted lamb. In villages and small towns, and sometimes even in Athens, you can see people roasting their lamb on a spit. They gather in yards and open places and turn the spit slowly while somebody oils the roast with a feather dipped into a concoction of oil, origanum and lemon juice. This has acquire the character of a ceremony, a real festivity. Every person who happens to pass by can receive his treat of lamb with a glass of wine and the wish “Many happy returns”.

Mauro Giachetti

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Greek Tradition, National Tourist Organization of Greece Information Department, Athens s.d.

DIMITRIS S. LOUKATOS, Eisagoge sten hellenike laografia, Athens 1978

Thrace, General Secretariat of the Region of East Macedonia-Thrace, Komotini 1994