What You Did Not Know About The Orthodox Easter

No matter to which religious tradition you swear allegiance, if you live in Crete, you might have noticed a profound truth: for Orthodox Christians Easter is the thing.

No other celebration around the year gets so much attention, so much energy and involves so much food as Easter.

Coming after 6 weeks of strict fasting…you would say the food and the partying are to be expected…However, there is more to it than meets the eye.

Easter is not only Easter Sunday but it includes the week before…the Holy Week or…the Week of Passions as we call it in Romania.

During this week, each step of Jesus is being carefully accounted for in rituals that add to each other to recreate the energy of an event that happened more than 2000 years ago…2023 to be more precise!

Looking back at my own upbringing, in an essentially orthodox society, Easter was as much a religious celebration as a social happening.

It was the time when us kids were allowed to linger on the streets until late at night as the Holy Friday Mass went on until midnight...The warm spring breeze was making the blossoming trees rain little pink and white petals, the sound of the funeral hymn resounding in the distance.

And it was not only that…it was also the smell of the freshly cleaned carpets and floors with the occasion of the famous and feared spring cleaning of the house that did not leave a single feather unturned and continued for days on end.

It was my parents being at home as compared to being always away for work or for their other daily activities, the spring recess, the feeling that these are ‘not the usual kind of days’ that filled the air.

It was the 24 hour fasting period on the Holy Friday with its apprehension that on this day something serious and cruel had happened.

No other celebration has this distinct flavour of mixed life and death as Ester has. No other celebration leaves you with a blood aftertaste.

In other Christian traditions, the general emphasis is on work ethics as a way of reaching the after-life Paradise.

Not for the orthodox…as for us…the emphasis is on pain and redemption…as symbolised by the Christ on the Cross, as symbolised by the Week of Passions.  

Compared to this huge emotional hurdle that the Week of Passions is, with its story of betrayal crucifixion and death, Easter Sunday is almost not enough to bring the message of the resurrection.

 

Who Is Speaking?

I am Dana Haridasi ILIESCU - by now most of you know me as the main 'agitator' behind the Conscious Crete Movement. I am the organiser of most of the events and also the first blessed participant to them.

I am also the editor of the Conscious Crete Newsletter.

I am a stress management coach, family constellations facilitator and artist among many others. I used to be a climate policy maker and international negotiator before life showed me that it had different plans for me.

 If you would like to know all my story and my methods check me out at www.dana-iliescu.com.

If you are interested in experiencing a family constellation, check out the schedule of events here.