Galery

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Emanuela Karastoyanova

Health, love and piece are wishing each other the Athenians for this Easter. This is what www.grreporter.info found out when took a tour around the streets of Athens few hours after the citizens of the capital have greeted each other with the words “Christ is risen” and have shared the festive table with their families it. “I don’t wish for myself anything different than on any other holyday. I wish for myself health and love” – shares Hara, who is at work in Starbucks on this holyday. Health and love also wishes for himself her colleague Miltos. “This are the most important things to a person” – he says… “I wish for myself what I do on every other holyday. Health and love. And piece” – says Linos an employee working at the reception of a hotel. “On New Year’s Eve one wishes for himself all kinds of things. Easter is again a religious holyday and then one wishes for himself and to everybody else health, love and piece…I don’t think this Easter the Greeks have to wish for themselves anything more special related to the crisis for example. There has been chaos and confusion for about 10 years and the problem is much deeper than it seems. It is just now coming up on the surface in a form which we can all see” – he explains.

The wishes of our interlocutors sound sincere. On this day we also want to wish them and all the people health, love and piece. And for the holyday itself – let us say that it brings light and optimism. This exactly is the day on which the Christians believe that life has defeated death. The Resurection of Christ, Passover or whatever else they call it this is the Holyday of all holydays. It is interesting the fact that it has a deeper meaning to the Orthodox Christians than to the Catholics to whom a deeper symbolical meaning has the birth of Christ. The traditions in the Christianity related to Easter (or the “Holy night” as some of the Christians call Easter) are many. Today there is no home of orthodox Christians where the day doesn’t start with the egg wrestle. This tradition is very old and has even reached some Catholics. Old and interesting is also the tradition of painting the eggs. Few are the people however who remember that out of all the colors we are using to color our eggs the red one is mandatory – it is a symbol of the blood of Christ. This of course is the least interesting thing for the “consumers” of the eggs – the children to whom red or not the egg is a tool for the Easter “wrestle”. Another interesting tradition when the children in Bulgaria (at least in some regions) still enjoy is that on Easter their parents has to buy them something new – usually clothes or shoes. And dressed like this they sit at the festive table…