Greek Language Blog

We continue from the last post with the Easter celebration in Greece. Last time we stopped to the Great Thursday that the tsoureki and the red eggs are prepared.

Holy Friday is a day of mourning since Jesus died on the cross. Bells will ring slow and steady through the day and the Greek flags all over the country are lowered to the half-mast. It is a day of no work or cooking. Friday’s food has to be prepared from the previous day.

From Thursday’s night women are decorating with flowers and flower petals a wooden structure representing the Jesus’s grave. The name of it is Epitaphios (Επιτάφιος).

Friday noon the nails that hold the figure of Christ are pulled out and the figure is taken off the cross and wrapped in a white cloth. Throughout the day, people are going to church passing under the Epitafios on knees until the time of 19.00 o’clock, when the Epitaphios will be taken on hands in a funeral service. Epitaphios is carried through the streets in a solemn procession. In cities, towns and villages with more than one church the Epitaphios parades may join together at certain points.

On Saturday the Orthodox Patriarch emerges the Holy Fire from the tomb of Christ in Jeruselem. The Holy Fire is flown and transferred to the airport of Athens. From there the light is distributed all over Attika and the rest of the Greece.

Shortly before the midnight of Saturday, pretty much the entire country is in the church. There will be so many people, that they will just gather outside of the church. Often churches are equiped with speakers to be able to hear the priest inside. Everyone will bring along with them a white candle and the children their special candle which we call lapmbada(Λαμπάδα), which is nothing else than a decorated candle. The lights are turned off at midnight and the priest announces that Christ has arisen from the dead. The light is given from one to the other and soon the whole church is illuminated by the light of everyone’s candles. The bells ring in celebration, fireworks go off and ships sound their sirens.

Then everyone heads for home with their lighted candles where they trace the cross three times above the door for blessing. The fast of the 40 days is time to break with a traditional bowl of margeritsa(μαγειρίτσα), a thick green soup made from the intestines of the lamb that will be grilled the following day.

A tradition with the red (κόκκινο) eggs takes place as well. It is named “tsougrisma”(τσούγκρισμα). It is a kind of competition among people. Each one takes an egg in their hand, with one end of the egg sticking out. Taking it in turns with their partner, one will hit the opponent’s egg with their own egg. The person whose egg cracks is out of the round. The winner then goes on to another round with someone else and so on until only one left with the strongest egg.

Easter (Πάσχα,Pascha) is the second largest celebration after the Orthodox Christmas. For others Easter is considered to be more important than Christmas. It is celebrated throughout Greece where there are different customs from one city to the other. For the Orthodoxs the Great Week has just begun yesterday. This Sunday is called the Palm Sunday (Κυριακή των Βαΐων) and represents the entrance of Jesus in the Jerusalem and the reception by the inhabitants with branches of palms. During the Holy or Great Week (Μεγάλη Εβδομάδα,megalee evdomada), church holds services at least once per day, commemorating the last week in the life of Jesus Christ.

The people who didn’t start fasting since  Clean Monday, forty days ago, the Great Week is the beginning of fasting for them.  Traditionally during this week people eat no meat, oil or dairy products until the midnight on Easter Saturday, after the symbolic Resurrection. Additionally, during the Holy Week people are not “allowed” to celebrate and listen to happy music, especially the Holy Friday which is a day of mourning.

The three first days of the week nothing special happens apart from people going to church. From Thursday the preparation gets underway for the Easter celebration.

On Thursday morning the service commemorates the Last Supper (Μυστικό Δείπνο) and the Betrayal of Christ. This is the day that the special bread-kind sweet called “Tsoureki”(Τσουρέκι) is baked and hard – boiled eggs are dyed red. The red eggs symbolize the blood of Crist as well as a new life. Eggs and tsoureki are made to be eaten not before Sunday.

Thursday’s evening service is a long one and features the twelve gospel readings. It is in this service that a representation of the Christ on the cross takes place. From this very moment, bells are ringing in a mourning tempo until the time of the Resurrection on Saturday’s midnight.

From a spectator’s point of view from Friday it starts to get very interesting. The next post will follow with the rest of the days until Easter as well as some well-known customs and traditions.

I suppose many of you have seen the movie “My big fat Greek wedding“.  Well, today my post will be on the customs which take place before the wedding. In another post I will tell you about the wedding itself and the customs after the wedding.

Making of the bed (Στρώσιμο του κρεβατιού):

Two days before the wedding is the making of the couple’s bed. This custom holds from the older times and it is connected with demonstration of the bride’s dowry (προίκα). Friends and family are invited to attend the making of the bed in the house in which the couple is going to live after the marriage (γάμος). The bed has to be made from single women including the future bride (νύφη). When the bed is ready, they call the future groom (γαμπρός) to inspect it. If he doesn’t like it, he removes everything from it and tells them to do it again. This is will be done a couple of times until the groom eventually likes it. When finally the bed is ready, the guests are invited to the bedroom. The visitors drop money and rice on the bed. The money is to help the couple to begin their life and the rice is to wish to the couple to make roots and stay together forever. At the end, if there is a boy or a girl or at best an infant (βρέφος) among the visitors, then they put him or her also on the bed in order to wish for fertility (γονιμότητα). It is said that the first child of the couple it will have the same gender of the one that was in the bed.

Preparation of the groom:

The preparation of the groom is pretty simple. Friends of the groom are gathering in his family house to dress him up. He is having a bath by himself and then he just sit on a chair and his male friends do the rest. His best friend starts with the shaving. This is to symbolize the trust between the groom and his best friend. Then, his friends will dressing him up part by part so that everybody can put something on him.

Preparation of the Bride:

As it is expected this is a whole story. Similarly with the groom the bride has to be dressed by her friends. Of course these are female friends and have to be singles (ελέυθερες). The bride has to wear something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. The old symbolizes her past and her connections with her family. The new symbolizes her optimism for a happy marriage.  The borrowed is taken from a married woman in order to take some her luck of her happy marriage. The blue symbolizes the love, the faith and the loyalty. If the bride takes care of these four categories in her life she will end up with a happy marriage. 

Under the shoes (παπούτσια) of the bride single women are writing their names. The names that will be erased until the end of the wedding will be the women that will get married soon. The father or a single man from the groom’s family (σόι) put the shoes to the bride. Then the bride will claim that the shoes are big for her and the best man has to put money inside the shoes until the shoes fit well.

 When the bride is ready, she leaves the house together with her father. Once she passed the door she should not look back neither to go back even if she has forgotten something. She leaves her past life back and starts a new one. It has to be mentioned that is forbidden for the couple to meet one day before the marriage. Moreover the groom will see the wedding dress for first time in the church.

images sources:

1.www.carpediem-hall.gr

2.www.photoworld.gr

3.www.thedecisivemoment.gr