(Written April 26th, 2022)
The Easter bunny has no idea how serious the Greek's take this holiday. Photo Credit: LibreShot/Martin Vorel
I knew Easter was bigger than Christmas here, but what I wasn’t aware of was the amount of discipline and serious church time it involved. Let me say that Easter for me growing up was a fairly good mix of church and bunny. Because I attended catholic schools, we did go through the meaning behind Easter and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We had to attend an Easter mass with the school, which for us, just meant we got to skip out on a math class or two.
At home it was all fun. Colouring easter eggs, chocolate, and waking up on Easter Sunday looking for our Easter basket the bunny had hid for us somewhere in the house. Then it was off to a cousin's house where we would get together and eat a nice meal, crack some eggs, and just spend some quality time.
Jesus is Front and Centre for Greek Easter
I did not grow up in a overly religious family. When I was little I remember I went to church a handful of times to make my grandma happy but I was never forced to go by my parents, and I believe this was the case because they were forced to go when they were younger. I grew up in a house where we lived by the golden rule of "be kind to everyone and treat people with respect." We didn’t have the bible recited to us by any means. Basically, "don’t be a shitty person" was our up bringing.
Greek Easter was a lot for me to take in. If you are hard core Greek Orthodox, you will fast for 40 days leading up to Easter. This means no meat or animal products of any kind. I like to call it the “Vegan 40” diet. The less intense crew do this for the week before Easter. This is the level most of his family is at. My body went into a bit of a shock doing this. I am a good eater. I LOVE food. I love protein and I love dairy. Eating straight carbs for a week my body legit shut down on me. I don’t know how people do this for 40 days. I was cranky and tired and weak. I legit started stumbling around as if my body forgot how to move properly. It was too much for me.
Back at home in Canada we have the option if you want to participate in lent where you give up one thing you love for the 40 days. Usually this is some form of junk food or bad habit you have. Anyways, so that's the start if this Marathon. The fast.
Take Me to Church
From what I understand, the more times you can enter a church on these days the better. Now whether it’s to try to prove to your judgemental old neighbour that you are a good Greek, or because you actually are religious, the more candles you light and the more times you cross yourself the better. You are gaining points with the man upstairs. #Blessed.
Friday night, also known as Holy Friday, there is basically a funeral procession for Jesus Christ. Churches decorate what is called a Epitaphios. This is a large religious symbol beautifully decorated in flowers and is bearing the image of the dead body of christ. Intense I know. Everyone gathers at the church around 10pm and lights candles. They follow behind the Epitaphios as it is lead around the neighbourhood.
This is the part where you lose me a bit when it comes to religious ceremonies. In writing, this sounds like a very somber serious event, but what actually happens is people use this as a time to socialize and catch up with friends and family. Everyone walks around with their candle talking about what their plans are for Easter, how auntie Sofia is doing, and trying not to light the persons hair on fire that's in front of them. Religious ceremonies are such a show to me. Most people are not there for the right reasons, hence why I don’t understand participating. But I digress.
Saturday is an interesting day. Most spend it laying around because they are absolutely starving by this point and they know they have to attend a midnight mass. I’m not going to lie to you. I was stressed about about this day. First of all I get bad vibes from churches. I don’t really believe 95% of what the church stands for, and the incense gives me insanely bad migraine headaches. Not to mention I am not Greek Orthodox and I don’t speak Greek, so the thought of sitting through a three hour mass was insanely daunting to me. I would also like to add that my dear love conveniently booked a work shift this day so he wouldn’t have to attend. Yes thats right. He left me to fend for myself in this church adventure…. Bless his heart…….
SO here we go! After an afternoon nap and a very strong cup of coffee at 10pm I got ready for the midnight mass. Again, with this night most people go at midnight, stand outside the church for 30 minutes, wait for the priest to say Christ has risen, kiss each other, and rip out of there as fast as they can so they can go home and eat a real meal for the first time in at lest a week…..Not my love’s family. They are hard core Easter people. I stood outside a church holding a candle with his two brothers for 3 hours…….listening to hymens recited by a young women who’s voice now haunts my dreams. It was very Handmaid’s Tale sounding. Good times. At one point my candle started giving off a strong black smoke. I’m pretty sure God knew I was an imposter.
Can I Sleep Now?
When I got home at 3am I was ready for bed….nope not allowed. Now you eat Kokoretsi. I dare you to google what Kokoretsi is. I would save you the details of what it is but I need you to understand how this is the LAST thing you would ever want to eat ever, let alone at 3am. Kokoretsi is lamb intestines wrapped around chopped up hearts, lungs, or kidneys, and grilled together. Saturday was my nightmare lol.
Finding Balance
It’s hard for me in these cultural situations because I don’t want to be disrespectful and say I will stay home instead. His family is so loving and wonderful and they want to include me in everything which is very kind. I never want to offend them by saying that I don’t feel comfortable, or that I don’t want to take part in these moments that they enjoy so much. So what do I do? My internal struggle is either attending these things and just dealing with what it is and being uncomfortable, or respectfully declining. I dunno. What I do know is that evening was a lot and it’s not even Easter Sunday yet…
Many Lambs Were Harmed in the Making of this Holiday
Lamb is the main meal on Easter Sunday. Where do you get the lamb from you might ask? Not at a butcher shop. Oh no my friends. Many families have the lamb shipped from their village where it was slaughtered.
My love and I were given the task of retrieving the lamb from a bus terminal…We arrived at the terminal where bags of lamb corpses were being dragged around trying to find the people they belonged to. ***Culture shock alert***. This to me did not seem super sanitary or reasonable. You mean to tell me that grandma killed this lamb two days ago, wrapped it in a plastic bag and put it on a bus? No refrigeration, no special packaging, just a bag with a fresh dead animal in it……This is super common apparently because ours wasn’t the only lamb getting dragged around the terminal soooo I guess its okay??
My love flipped the lamb over his shoulder carried it to our car and threw it in the trunk to bring home. Weird moment for me. I felt like a mafia guy driving a dead body to a unidentified location.
He's with Jesus Now
The lamb then hung in the yard for two days which I pretended was not there and avoided looking at it. Luckily for me on Sunday morning when I woke up the lamb was already on the rotisserie grill and well on it's way to being cooked.
No Jesus duties on the Sunday thank God, maybe except saying a little silent prayer for my lamb friend who is in a better place. Just relaxing and eating. That I can handle. Lessoned learned that moving forward, I will be skipping out on the church adventures and the meat prep. Just call me when it's Sunday and the lamb doesn’t look like a lamb anymore please and thank you. Happy Easter everyone!
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