Easter

Polish tradition

One of the holidays we’re about to celebrate is Easter. Poland is a catholic country so there is no difference in some traditions. Firstly let us describe what main stages of that holiday haven’t changed since past times. In our country, all the Catholics have opportunity to prepare themselves before holy week, by Great Lent which lasts 40 days and finishes on the Holy Thursday. It’s time to self conclusions and clearing your heart of sins.If it goes about meaning of a single day. it’s reconstruction of Jesus Christ’s last episodes of life.

• Holy Thursday all the people gathering in church to celebrate “Last Supper” and establishment of “The Eucharist”. 
• Holy Friday which includes remembering suffering of Jesus, passion and his crucifixion, we’re doing that by reconstructing “Way of the Cross” and reading conclusions over every station of it. 
• Holy Saturday that day purpose is to stay awake close to Jesus grave, while waiting for his resurrection. 
• Easter (Pash) is the most important day in Christian calendar. Every catholic is celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, who overcome death, forgave everyone’s sins, giving us hope and faith. 
• Easter Monday (Wet Monday) (not connected with Jesus live) main purpose is to thank for the harvest and to consecrate fields with holly water.

Now when you know all the main facts connected with Easter we can describe What is so special in celebrating it and staying aware of tradition. Firstly, one of the most beautiful rituals is making a basket of goods for consecrating (Święconka). Although it sounds a little surprising, it brings out all the family bonds. Every member of family is helping in decorating the basket. The basket usually contains bread, meat, salt, pepper, vegetables, spices even sweets, so we can always choose what we want to put in it, but what is common in every basket is sheep. Often made of sugar, but not always it depends on human choice. Not only is food important in making the basket, but also the basket itself. When people gather in a church to consecrate their baskets, everyone looks on the nearest neighbours’ arts of work. The baskets are tied with ribbons, laces, either all kind of figures connected with Jesus and religion, or just figures of little chickens, hares, sheep. What people see more important in decorating the basket is making Easter Eggs, which are painted and originally decorated by family members in all houses. Every single egg has something special, because it’s always made with the heart of its maker. Although, eggs are mostly painted by children, adults always help or even make them themselves.

The Easter Baskets are connected with next fantastic tradition, that is also held in the morning, but on Easter day. What I mean is an Easter Breakfast. Everyone of the family gather at the table and start little prayer. In which they thank for everything that is on the table, and asks for future goods.Then everyone musttry a bit of everything from the Easter Basket from meat, through salt, to Easter eggs. After that, everybody sits in their seats and starts to eat. The table is always full of food but the most common and traditional dish is sour rye soup or Borsh, it’s typically Polish soup called żurek.

Despite the traditions mentioned above, the most interesting and intriguing is Wet Monday.

This day has its beginnings in pagan Poland when people celebrated awakening of the nature, but with the matter of time and civilization development the goal of this holiday changed into playing pranks on neighbours and others. As the name of the holiday suggests, most pranks were connected with water. Young men was chasing after the unmarried women to get them wet, and everyone was having fun. Back to our times. People are still developing this tradition, but the rules have changed. Now not only do boys chase girls to splash liters of water on them, but girls also try to wet boys. Methods are various from using toys like water guns and pouring water filled buckets to using the garden snake. It’s very original and fascinating holiday though interest of this day decreases with age so it’s rather uncommon to see an adult with a plastic water bag in hand, still it’s great to see children playing with each other. We hope you enjoyed this description, even if we couldn’t show all the details because of the size of this holiday. But we hope to get you wet in May, that’s for sure.

Lithuanian tradition

Easter is a big and beautiful spring festival. Lots of Lithuanian folk customs and traditions are related with this festival such as binding a bunch of willow, consecration of fire and water, adornment of the environment with the various handicrafts, decorating and painting eggs, rolling them, going singing from door to door and collecting presents, swinging, various guesses and fortunetelling.

Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the springtime full of the moon. The main symbol of the Easter is an Easter egg. It was believed in the antiquity that decorated egg is sacral, having magic power; it has cosmic creative power which can continue the life on the earth. The Easter egg is the symbol of life, productivity, fruitfulness and revival of the nature.

The eggs decoration custom is older than Christianity. In heathen Lithuania Easter eggs were sacrifice to harvest gods and put on the cemetery. It was found eggs from clay, bone and stone in Gediminas Mountain. The first written origin in which it is mentioned the Easter egg is M.Mažvydas’ “St.Ambraziejus song” (1549).