Easter Holidays

Easter Holidays.  We had gone to bed about 4 AM, but now it was 8 AM and time for breakfast.  Not just time for any breakfast, but time for Easter breakfast.   It should be noted that many Christians of the Orthodox variety observe a meatless and dairyless fast throughout the 40 days of Lent.  So breakfast on Easter Sunday is literally a breaking of the Great Fast.  Who cares if you only have gotten four hours of sleep, it’s time to get up and eat meat and eggs!  The table is set with every type of meat available, chicken racituri, cold cuts of salami and ham, cheese, duck, rabbit.  For a variety, there is salads of carrot and cabbage, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, pickles.  Home made bread and homemade sweet breads fill the table.  Red colored easter eggs are in a basket.  Most of these foods were probably blessed at the Easter vigil service last night.  Of course, the meal begins with a shot of serious spirits, maybe vodka or racqiu ( homemade whiskey).

The Easter holiday is simply the same meal repeated many times over in various places over the next three days.  The place of the meal is usually a different place each time.  It is at your relatives, or neighbors, or nanashi (godparents).  By the same meal, I mean plates of meat, salads, homemade bread, smoked fish, cheese, dyed eggs, bananas, oranges, chocolates.  And there is usually a bottle of homemade spirits that will be consumed, and then a bottle of homemade wine.  Usually the schedule of this meal is very loose.  It begins when people arrive.  They stay until their full.  And tomorrow you will go to their house to do the same all over again. 

During the meal important family information is exchanged.  Who has died, married, moved, had children?  What does the coming year look like?  Will we make it on our pensions?  Will we be better off joining the European Union?  Will the price of brinsa remain stable?  How much garlic do you put in your eggplant?  How long will your husband be away working in Moscow ?  Do you have a cemetery plot picked out?  May the end come quickly, we can’t afford any long suffering treatments. 

While people enjoy nibbling on a table full of good food, and enjoy sharing news of each other’s family, grandmothers play with their grandchildren bouncing them on their knee, young mothers enjoy having some adult company and try to be comfortable in their next trimester.  Men speak of cows and goats and the price of growing corn. 

The next meal.  That’s at someone else’s house.  But they are anxious to have you come and try some of the latest home made cognac that their son in law has brewed.  Happy Easter.  Hristos a inviat!  Advederat inviat.