The Orthodox Easter was celebrated on Sunday, 8th of April, with colored eggs and typical recipes, but also a consolidated liturgy.
Orthodox Easter usually doesn’t coincide with the Catholic one because the Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar for calculation, not the Gregorian one. For this reason the Orthodox Easter often is celebrated one week after the Catholic one.
The Easter’s ritual begins a long time before.
During Lent, people refrain from eating meat, eggs and dairy products, and from drinking alcohol, so to purify the body and the spirit completely.
On Saturday before Easter people usually go to the churches and bring to bless the dishes – like colored eggs, the paska (a sweet ricotta cake with candied fruit) and the kulic (a cylindrical cake that reminds “panettone”) - that they will eat the day after.
In Ukraine, egg decoration is a real ritual, which the babushke handed down from generation to generation.
The famous pysanka is in fact an Easter egg, usually of hen and possibly white, which is decorated and colored with a particular artistic technique, based on hot wax and natural colors.
The motifs are engraved with a special awl called pysachoko kistka, which has a tiny funnel containing a small amount of candle wax.
The same word pysanka derives from the verb "pysaty" ("to write" in Ukrainian): literally it is written on the eggs.
We have also tried to respect the tradition, spending the Easter's day together, eating and painting eggs.
до побачення!
Antonio
