Brief Outline
• History of the Holiday (Origins, Fluctuating Date, Religious Aspect)
• Brief description of how different cultures celebrate in their original countries
• Cultures in America (Not certain of the groups but have asked for information from Greeks, Italians, Hispanics, Romanians, and Polish so far, in addition to my German heritage)
• Commercialization of Easter
Preliminary Interviewing
• Greece
“well, the most important aspect of easter has to be going to church and celebrating the resurrection of Christ in such a traditional way. I went to church all week for like 3 hrs a night lol it really is mad important. During holy week, there is a strict fast, cant eat meat or dairy or that much food whatsoever. On holy friday, the whole church community walks around the block that the church lies on to symbolize Jesus walking with the cross to the place where he was crucified. On holy saturday, when we actually celebrate the resurection, everyone lights candles and says “Xristos Anesti” to one another with a response of “Alithos Anesti” meaning “Christ Has Risen” and “Truly he has risen”(Very important tradition that you should def add). On Easter sunday, you’re allowed to eat everything and their is mad food: lamb on a spit (staple of culture lol), spanakopita mousaka, feta, chicken, pita, olives, etc Theres a basket of eggs, everyone picks one, crack them with each other, and whoever’s egg lasts the longest and doesn’t crack, i guess you’re lucky. its kinda like winning the lottery, on a wayyyy smaller scale.”
• Poland 1
Polish Basket Example
“On saturday, we go to church for a quick service to bless our baskets. each family usually brings a basket to church so that the priest blesses it. each basket should have: babka (this polish cake thing), butter, eggs, polish sausage,bread, a lamb statue made out of sugar, salt/pepper, and ham. the baskets are usually decorated with colorful laces and have little chicks inside and green twigs on the sides. in my parish, there are services every 30 minutes throughout holy saturday where the priest blesses the baskets. its tradition that you dont eat before going to church that day and when you get home, you have a meal based on the things you bless.
On sunday, we go to one of our family members house for a days worth of eating
Interviewee and Family on Easter
and drinking. its our tradition to go to the 9am mass at my parish and then go to the family members house afterwards. we stay there for the entire day. we start the meal witha prayer and then we first eat zurek, which is called sour rye soup in english as google tells me, and we put the food we got blessed the day before in it. after that, theres just a lot of food and it varies from meats to fish to random stuff i dont even know the name of, and lots and lots of drinking.”
• Poland 2
“Ash Wednesday starts the fasting period… and every Friday we cannot eat meat … and some families like mine don’t eat meat on Wednesdays either… then right before easter, we go to confession to get rid of our sins… then once Holy Week comes, easter cooking starts… you prepare a variety of meals… goodness there are so many that I don’t even know where to start….
there’s a Polish soup called Zurek (aka white borscht in english)
there’s white kielbasa, jajka faszerowane (stuffed hard cooked eggs), veal, kotlety, salatka jarzynowa (polish vegetable salad with things like eggs, apples, carrots, cucumbers, mayo, mustard etc), kielbasa, babka (a type of cake), eggs, different homemade meats, ummmm I can’t think of other things at the moment..
Then on Holy Thursday you go to mass… same with Holy Friday and Holy Saturday.. but on Holy Saturday before the vigil mass, we go to bless our easter baskets..
Then on Easter Sunday my family and I usually go to the Resurrection mass which is at 6 am and there’s a procession aroung the block with bells ringing and stuff. We come home and then have a family breakfast with the food that was in the blessed easter basket… then later on we have dinner and we eat all the stuff prepared earlier in the week…mainly lots of meat since we fast from meat usually from Wednesday (though not everyone does that)”
• Peru and Chile
“In Peru it isn’t celebrated like it is here. There are no bunnies or big dinners. My mom would just receive a chocolate egg from my grandfather and inside would be a surprise.
In Chile my dad would do a huge egg hunt with all the kids on the block in the mornings and they would celebrate by finding them and eating all the candy inside. There were also no big family gatherings or anything either.
My mom just said in America it’s much more exaggerated than it is over there. Sadly, I was raised as an American so my traditions are the same as the American traditions”
• Dominican Republic
“we go to church everyday during holy week. A mass that is geared especially towards that day and how it was recorded in the bible. on easter sunday you have to go to church with the nicest clothes you own. after we have a big lunch. nothing special just a lot of food. enough that it lasts to dinner time. then we just spend time together. In my family we invite as far as all my aunts and uncles and all my cousins. spanish familys are huge. like in mine 8 brothers and sisters and about 25 cousins”
• Dominican Republic and Ecuador
“I mean to be honest with you it really depends on the family, the circumstances…living in an american household obviously we went through the whole charade of the easter bunny and all that…but the holiday was really more about the superficialities, to us kids anyway, as opposed to the religion. sure I went to catholic school and learned about holy thursday, good friday, holy saturday, and easter sunday, but even the masses on each of those days lost a little bit of their meaning; I think the kids in my family got more excited about the pretty new dresses they were going to wear, and the easter egg hunts they got to embark on afterwards.
As far as DR I did spend an easter there. I don’t know that there was that much of a difference, though as to whether that was the culture or the fact that I was coming to visit as a child with the american ideology if easter in my head I’m not entirely sure…but things were more or less the same, I got a pretty dress to wear, the neighborhood kids came over to hunt for eggs in the backyard…but the once perceptible difference I remember is that it was more family oriented. Yea I went through all the American motions of easter, but it wasn’t normally something that my grandmother did, not having kids of her own there to buy easter egg dying kits for. So it meant more to me, and I guess it gave me a different kind of easter experience, one that was more centered around family, community. Community especially because my grandfather had a lot of land, and was one of the wealthier residents within the neighborhood, and the easter egg hunt that my grandmother organized consisted of the neighborhood kids that weren’t as fortunate, the ones whose windows had bars on them because they couldn’t afford walls to keep out criminals…as odd as that sounds. In the end though it was that sense of community and family that I think differed when I went to the DR for easter…religion obviously factored into that as well, you know my grandmother and how important religion was to her, so we went to mass as well…but even that was different; we all sang these fun upbeat songs together, everyone within the church knew each other, they were all old friends. But overall I think it really just was a lottt more centered around a time for everyone to come together rather than just games and fun and pretty dresses.”
Research
• Website with information on “The History of Easter,” “Why Does Easter’s Date Change?,” “Where Did the Easter Bunny Come From?,” “The History Behind Easter Eggs,” and “Easter Traditions Around the World”
• Website with a complete list of over 50 countries and how they celebrate the holiday
• Article dedicated on the commercialization of Easter
• Information regarding the origins of the holiday
• The History of the Easter Egg
• Information on the history of the holiday
• Brief information on how the holiday is celebrated in the United States
• Baruch database article on the history of Easter
• NY Times Article: “Easter’s Coats of Many Colors; The Nuances of Culture Reflect the Ritual of Rebirth”
Comments Please!
Please comment on my post to offer critiques and suggestions. Also, if your family has a tradition, pertaining to your ethnicity, that you would like to share, please feel free to comment and let me know.
