15 April 2012 - Russian Orthodox Easter

A tasty cake/bread with raisins for Easter

The Russian Orthodox church follows the Julian calendar, which creates differences in when Easter and Christmas are celebrated, so this year Easter was celebrated last weekend in most of Christianity but is celebrated today by the Russian Orthodox church.

I was curious whether there might be other differences in the celebrations and there do appear to be a few noteworthy aspects.  Let me say in advance, though (and in case it wasn't clear from my last post), that I am not a Catholic so some of the things that I may note may not be different from how non-Russian Orthodox Catholics may celebrate the holiday.

The biggest difference seems to be that the big celebration is not on Easter Sunday but the night before.  I had heard a bit about this celebration from a colleague (you may recall Larry from a previous posting) this week.  It came up as his birthday was this past week but he said he wanted to celebrate it next week because this is a special religious week.  I'm not sure whether that is a reflection of Lent still being in effect (it is apparently a seven week period here) and thus he couldn't indulge in cake or something else.  Anyway, he had mentioned that Saturday night was the big deal and he noted that the biggest celebration would be carried online on all the major channels and they culminated in the opening of the cathedral doors around midnight.  I was intrigued and wanted to learn more.

The celebration begins a bit before Saturday night, though.  A flame from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is flown to Moscow and is known as the Holy Fire.  I am curious about the logistics of having a fire aboard a plane, I will admit.  Anyway, this Holy Fire is used to light a bunch of candles, which the patriarch and other priests/officials take outside with them.  They then walk around the church, and approach the cathedral doors and enter as the bells chime that it is midnight.  The remainder of the audience is still inside the cathedral during this time.  The patriarch then goes to the front and proclaims that Christ is risen, while swinging the thurible.  The crowd responds back as he says this several times.

As far as I can tell, the remainder of the service seems to be a regular mass with all the traditions, beauty, music, ornate vestments and pomp that one would expect of an important holiday.  I believe that the service that was broadcast is the largest service in Russia and perhaps the world.  It was held in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (which has an interesting history of its own) and was attended by over 6,000 people.  Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister (for now) Putin were in attendance and apparently (I didn't catch this part, so perhaps it was performed off-camera) exchanged Easter eggs with Patriarch Kirill who led the service.

A very interesting event that, of course, makes me wish I could understand Russian.  The following link provides a bit more background if you're interested and some photos and video links from the event.  Russia Today's article on Easter

This video link also provides some background.



One other thing that I have learned about the season through my grocery shopping, is that little cakes with some icing and other decorations appear to be popular for the season.  I bought the one pictured at the top of this blog and devoured it this morning.  Quite tasty and apparently a traditional cake/bread made with raisins.  It tastes like a braided bread my Mom makes at Christmas called Houska.  I looked that up today and it appears that Houska is a traditional Czech bread often made for Easter.  Who knew?