How Russians celebrate one of Christians’ biggest holiday

Easter in Russia

Easter is one of the main religious holidays in Russia that came to ancient Russia from Byzantine in the end of X century when Rus’ (old name of Russia) was baptized.

While catholic world perceive Easter mostly as a secular holiday, using it to gather and spend time with their families, orthodox countries and Russia in particular put a very special religious sense into it.

Easter is widely celebrated all across Russia, being the third most celebrated holidays after New Year and personal birthdays.

On Holy Saturday they consecrate eggs they painted on Holy Thursday and Easter cakes they baked. The night before Easter Day all main churches have processions and all-night vigils.

EASTER – a holy day for Russian orthodox Easter lasts for 40 days and is the longest Christian holidays. During this period Christians are fasting, they aren’t allowed to eat any animal products. During the Holy Week – the last week before Easter Day – Christians go to confessions and take communion.

EASTER BREAKFAST Traditionally Easter Breakfast starts when the sun rises. The meal starts with painted eggs, Easter cake and Paskha – a dish made of curd cheese with raisins, dried apricots and candied fruits. Red-painted eggs symbolize the life and blood of Christ, the cake symbolizes Christ’s body and Paskha – His coffin. The egg painting tradition comes from the biblical times. Legend has it Mary Magdalene went to Rome to tell Tiberius about the Christ’s resurrection and gave him the egg. Tiberius didn’t believe her and said that the egg would rather turn red than a person would come back from the dead. Needless to say, the egg turned red in that instant.

GAMES AND FESTIVITIES During the celebratory breakfast families usually play bitki – a special game where two players need to bang boiled egg against their opponent’s boiled egg. Wins the one whose egg didn’t break. This game dates back to the Middle Ages. Another Easter game is Easter Eggroll – players roll their Easter eggs down a gentle slope trying to push other eggs. The winner takes their opponent’s egg.

On Easter faithful Christians greet each other saying, “Christ has risen” and reply with “Indeed He has risen”, kiss three times on the cheek and give each other Easter eggs.

In general, the holiday is very widely and cheerfully celebrated – delicious meals, cooking master-classes, roundelays, concerts, games and theatrical performances are widespread all across Russia.

DID YOU KNOW? Up until the October Revolution of 1917 Easter used to be a state holiday. When Bolsheviks became the ruling power all religious holiday were gradually and were replaced with secular holidays like meetings of communist youth. One could be fired for going to church or even be prosecuted for political reasons. The Soviet authorities allowed believers to openly celebrate the holiday only once, after the start of World War II. On the night of April 5, 1942, curfew was canceled in Moscow. Easter services were held in the capital and the region, which, according to the Moscow NKVD department, were visited by 85 thousand people. Church services also took place in besieged Leningrad and in some other cities and towns of the country. The unspoken ban on Easter continued for the next 40 years. In the late 1980s, on the eve of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Russia (1988), a revision of state policy regarding the church and the rights of believers began. The sign says “Religion is poison for people”

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