The date of the Greek Orthodox Easter is based on a modified Julian calendar and since the Western world uses the Gregorian calendar, the festivities sometimes do not usually occur at the same time as other Christian Easter celebrations.
Sometimes however, the two dating systems happily collide and this year,
2011 Greek Orthodox Easter is celebrated on the same day as Easter in the Western church — on Sunday, April 24.
The celebrations for Easter truly begin two months before with Mardi Gras. The Carnival season starts on the Sunday of Teloni and Fariséou and ends on Shrovetide Sunday with the Burning of the Carnival King.
An enormous paper mache effigy of Judas is set alight just after sunset and fireworks and feasting continue throughout the night.
The following day, Kathara Deftera, is known as Clean Monday or Ash Monday and for Greeks, this is one of the most festive holidays of the year.
Trees are decorated, mimosas burst into bloom, the air is filled with the smell of wonderful cooking and the feeling that this is a special day is felt by all. Families, friends and food. This is how Lent begins in Greece.
If Kathara Deftera and Lenten Sunday feasts are the preliminaries for Greek Easter, Holy Week is the peak of these activities. On Holy Thursday the bright dyed red eggs that are symbolic of Easter in Greece are prepared.
Tradition says that the Virgin Mother, Mary, dyed eggs this color to celebrated the Resurrection of Christ and to celebrate life. Every Greek family prepares these eggs as part of the Easter Sunday Resurrection Table.
The eggs are coloured red to signify the blood of Christ. Hard boiled eggs (painted on Holy Thursday) which are baked into twisted sweet bread loaves or distributed on Easter Sunday. People rap their eggs against those of their friends eggs and the owner of the last uncracked egg is considered lucky.
The Midnight service is without a doubt the most important day on the calendar. At midnight all the lights are extinguished in the church and the priest comes from behind the doors on the altar carrying a candle. He walks to someone in the front row and lights their candle and these people who receive the light of the resurrection, the light is a symbol of the resurrection, pass the light from candle to candle and the light fills the church. Everybody leaves the church just before midnight, singing a song the words of which mean, Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. Through death conquering death. At midnight at the moment of the resurrection all the families have gone to church together, all standing sort of huddled in these little insular units and everybody kisses everybody and say, 'Christos anesti, Christos anesti, Christ has risen, indeed He has risen. And it's a very touching moment. In the moment of conquering death, it has a certain meaning to kiss your grandparents at that point, who you know you'll be burying soon. And to be kissing the children who are coming up, who will be replacing you in the next generation. And there's a feeling of the weight of centuries. People have been saying these prayers unchanged for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
Even if you don't share the Greek Orthodox faith - there is something so spiritually moving about traditions that have spanned generations and you just know, these will continue until the end of time.
