Greek Easter Traditions

Greek Easter traditions shape the Orthodox year across Greece. They run from the last days of Lent to the joyful week after Pascha. Pascha is the Greek name for Easter. The topics here are Lazarus Saturday, its spice breads, the hymn of Kassia and red eggs. Further topics are the Epitaphios, its Lamentations and the midnight hymn Christos anesti. Bright Week and the Vrontados rocket custom on Chios also feature. For trips through Greece with a host, see Corfu tours and Greece small group tours. More outings appear under Greece tours.

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What are Greek Easter traditions?

Greek Easter traditions are the customs that surround Pascha, the Greek name for the feast of Easter. In Greece, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday are traditional public holidays. Greek law also treats every Sunday as a public holiday.

In the majority of languages, the feast takes its name from the Greek and Latin Pascha. Clear signs of a fuller Christian festival of Pascha date from the middle of the 2nd century. Greek Easter traditions follow a moveable feast, a holy day with no fixed date in the calendar. The holidays linked to Easter move with it.

In Eastern Christianity, Great Lent, the long fast before Easter, starts on Clean Monday and lasts 40 days. Near midnight, every light in the church goes out except the unsleeping flame on the altar. An unsleeping flame is a lamp kept burning without end. At midnight, the priest lights his own candle from that flame.

The people take the light from his flame and kindle their own candles. Clergy and people then walk three times around the church. In Greek Easter traditions, the priest carries the Paschal trikirion on this walk. The trikirion is a special candlestick that holds three candles. The deacon holds a special Paschal candle.

• Church bells: The bells of the church ring without a pause while the procession goes around.
• Lit candles: The people hold the candles lit at midnight through the whole of the liturgy.
• A second meaning: In the Orthodox Church, Pascha is also a name used for Jesus himself.

Greek Easter traditions open the Paschal Vigil, a service held at night, with the Midnight Office. That office is the last service in the Lenten Triodion. The Triodion is the church book that holds the hymns and readings for the weeks of Lent.

Which foods and crosses mark Lazarus Saturday in Greek Easter traditions?

Greek Easter traditions mark Lazarus Saturday, the moveable feast just before Palm Sunday. The day celebrates the raising of Lazarus of Bethany. In Greece and Cyprus, Orthodox Christians bake small sweet spice breads called lazarakia for it. The word means Little Lazaruses.

Bethany appears in the New Testament as a small village in Judaea. It was the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. With Palm Sunday, Lazarus Saturday forms a pair of joyful church days. These days sit between the sorrow for sin of Great Lent and the grief of Holy Week.

Greek Easter traditions include weaving detailed crosses from palm leaves on Lazarus Saturday. The Greek Church then uses these crosses on Palm Sunday. At the liturgy, a baptism hymn takes the place of the Trisagion. The Trisagion is a hymn that praises God as holy three times. Adult converts are still baptised on this day in certain churches.

Each lazaraki takes the form of a man bound in a burial cloth. Cloves mark the eyes of the figure, said to be Saint Lazarus. Greek Easter traditions treat lazarakia as a Lenten fasting food, so they hold no dairy and no eggs. For shine, bakers brush them with olive oil rather than egg or butter.

• Fish eggs: The fast eases on Lazarus Saturday so that people can eat caviar, meaning fish eggs.
• Cyprus link: The custom of baking lazarakia is said to have begun in Cyprus.
• A year-long keepsake: In the past, one lazaraki stayed in the home for a whole year.

Today, lazarakia for Greek Easter traditions come mainly from the bakery. Women once kneaded the dough and shaped it like a person. That human shape stood for life overcoming death. On Lipsi, women stood as symbols of the Virgin Mary in Holy Week.

Who was Kassia, and what does her hymn add to Greek Easter traditions?

Greek Easter traditions include a Holy Week hymn by Kassia, a Byzantine-Greek composer, hymn writer and poet. No other woman is known to have music in the Byzantine liturgy. Her hymn, the Hymn of Kassia, is chanted every year for Holy Wednesday.

Kassia was born into a wealthy family in Constantinople between 805 and 810. Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking eastern Roman state. By 843, she had set up a convent on the western side of the city. She became its first abbess, the woman who leads a community of nuns.

In Greek Easter traditions, the music of the hymn is slow, sorrowful and plaintive. Plaintive means that the tune sounds like a cry of grief. The piece calls for a wide vocal range. It ranks among the hardest works of solo Byzantine chant. Choirs also sing it with one shared melody, at times over a low held note.

A legend links the hymn to Emperor Theophilos. In the story, he found the unfinished hymn on her table and added one line. Kassia finished the hymn after the emperor had gone. Greek Easter traditions also include Holy Unction on Wednesday evening, above all in Greek Orthodox churches. Unction is an anointing with blessed oil.

• Surviving hymns: About fifty of her hymns survive, and at least 26 of them have uncertain authorship.
• Short verses: Kassia is credited with 261 secular works, both short poems called epigrams and moral sayings.
• Feast day: The Orthodox Church honours her as Saint Kassiani on 7 September each year.

Her convent had close ties with the nearby monastery of Stoudios. That monastery revised the Byzantine church books during the 9th and 10th centuries. This work helped to preserve her hymns. Greek Easter traditions still keep her hymns in use today.

How do red eggs shape Greek Easter traditions?

Greek Easter traditions include dyed eggs known in Greece as kokkina avga, meaning red eggs. Their dark red colour is a Greek custom that recalls the blood Christ shed on the cross. Orthodox Christian peoples treat them as a separate kind of Easter egg.

According to the orientalist Thomas Hyde, early Christians of Mesopotamia also stained Easter eggs green and yellow. An orientalist studies the languages and cultures of the East. Scholars of the medieval period tie the wide use of Easter eggs to the Lenten ban on eggs. After the fast, the eggs were blessed for Easter.

In Greek Easter traditions, the priest blesses the eggs at the end of the Easter night vigil. He then hands them out to the faithful. Christians see the egg as a sign of resurrection, because a new life lies sealed inside it. The hard shell also represents the closed tomb of Christ.

In past Greek Easter traditions, the first egg dyed red went to the home iconostasis. An iconostasis is the corner or stand where a household keeps its holy pictures, called icons. The egg was meant to keep evil away. Small lambs also had their heads and backs marked with the red dye for protection.

• At the meal: Red eggs belong to the Easter custom and can join other traditional Easter foods on the table.
• Cheesefare Week: Orthodox households used up their dairy foods in this week, just before Lent begins.
• Wider spread: From Mesopotamia, the Orthodox Churches carried the egg custom into Eastern Europe and Siberia.

Beyond Greek Easter traditions, red eggs also appear in Ukraine, where they are called krashanki. Haminados, eggs made for the Jewish feast of Passover, are prepared with similar methods. Passover is the spring feast that recalls the journey of the Israelites out of Egypt.

What is the Epitaphios in Greek Easter traditions?

Greek Easter traditions honour the Epitaphios, an embroidered cloth icon. It pictures the body of Christ after death. Its name means upon the tomb. Eastern Orthodox churches use it in the services of Holy Saturday. Those services are now commonly held on Good Friday evening.

In Greek Easter traditions, the word icon means a sacred image honoured in prayer. The image sits in a wide cloth border, with burgundy as the commonest colour. Gold letters around the edges commonly spell out the troparion of Holy Saturday. A troparion is a short church hymn of a single verse.

In certain Greek churches, a carved canopy called a kouvouklion rises over the Epitaphios. This bier stands for the Tomb of Christ. A bier is a stand for a body before burial. The church bells toll, and flags fly at half-mast in traditionally Orthodox countries. At times, the faithful crawl under the table that holds the Epitaphios.

In Greek Easter traditions, a great number of churches carry the whole bier, canopy and all. In a good number of Greek villages, the Epitaphios also passes among the graves of the cemetery. It offers the dead a pledge of life without end. In larger towns, a marching band playing funeral marches leads the way.

• Through the door: Clergy at times raise the Epitaphios over the church entrance so that all pass beneath it.
• Until Ascension: In Greek churches, it then rests on the altar, called the Holy Table, until Ascension Thursday.
• Military escort: Soldiers escort it through a number of cities, with weapons pointed down in mourning.

Greek Easter traditions use the Epitaphios of Christ, but an Epitaphios of the Theotokos also exists. Theotokos means Mother of God, a title of the Virgin Mary. Orthodox churches use it on 15 August, the feast of her Dormition, or falling asleep.

Which hymn do Greek Easter traditions sing at the tomb on Holy Friday?

Greek Easter traditions sing the Epitaphios Thrinos, or Threnody on the Tomb, on Holy Friday in Orthodox churches. A threnody is a song of mourning for the dead. It is counted among the best-loved hymns of the Orthodox faith.

Its second Greek name, Encomia Epitafiou, means Praises of the Tomb. An encomium is a speech or poem of praise. The verses of the hymn alternate with the verses of Psalm 118. That psalm also plays a large role in the Orthodox funeral service. The author of the Encomia is still unknown.

The earliest mention of encomia comes from manuscripts of the thirteenth century. The full set of these Lamentations first appeared in the 1522 Triodion, printed in Venice. That book holds the services for the weeks of Lent. In Greek Easter traditions, the hymn runs to 185 verses in three sections called stases.

The three stases recall the Passion, or suffering, of Christ, then his death and burial. In Greek Easter traditions, the priest sprinkles rosewater over the Epitaphios and the people at the third stasis. Rosewater is water scented with rose petals. The gesture stands for the anointing of the body of Christ with spices.

• First stasis: This section opens with the Greek words He zoe en taphoi, meaning Life in the tomb.
• Third stasis: The closing section begins with Hai geneai pasai, which means All the generations.
• Modern voices: Greek singers Maria Farantouri, Glykeria and Haris Alexiou have performed and recorded these hymns.

Outside Greek Easter traditions, the lyrics served as a pattern for new hymns of the same kind. Those later hymns honour the Dormition of the Virgin, Saint Nicholas and others. The Dormition is the feast that marks the death of the Virgin Mary.

When do Greek Easter traditions sing Christos anesti?

Greek Easter traditions greet the midnight of Pascha with Christos anesti, meaning Christ is risen. This short hymn, called the Paschal troparion, is the defining hymn of Easter in the Byzantine Rite. Both its author and its date remain unknown.

In Greek Easter traditions, clergy and people sing the troparion in front of the church doors. They join it to the Paschal Verses, lines taken from the psalms. Here the Paschal greeting passes between people for the first time. Then everyone walks back into the church, still singing the troparion.

Its first line rewords chapter 15, verse 20 of 1 Corinthians, from a letter of Saint Paul. The troparion was certainly sung in the 5th or 6th century. A Jerusalem hymn book shows it closing the Easter Vigil in that city. By the 10th century, it formed part of the liturgy at the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

Greek Easter traditions sing the hymn in the first plagal tone, also called the fifth tone. A tone is one of the eight sets of melodies used in Byzantine chant. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland placed the troparion in its hymnal in 1986. There it appears as hymn number 90, sung at Easter.

• The greeting: Orthodox Christians say Christ is risen, and the reply is Truly he is risen.
• Elsewhere: In Russia and Serbia, people also exchange a triple kiss on alternating cheeks after the greeting.
• On the telephone: During the Easter season, certain believers even answer the telephone with the greeting.

Greek Easter traditions share this hymn with the Eastern Catholic Churches as well. At the funeral of Pope Francis, their patriarchs chanted the Paschal troparion three times beside the coffin. Pope John Paul II received the same rite at his own funeral.

What happens during Bright Week in Greek Easter traditions?

Greek Easter traditions continue through Bright Week, the seven days that start on Easter Sunday. The week ends before the next Sunday, known as Thomas Sunday. Its Greek name can be translated as Renewal Week. The church counts the whole week as one continuous day.

During Bright Week, the Holy Doors of the iconostasis stay open day after day. No other week of the year sees them open in this way. The iconostasis is the wall of icons between the altar and the main church. The open doors recall the stone that was moved away from the tomb of Jesus.

Greek Easter traditions suspend ordinary fasting for the whole of Bright Week. No fast applies even on Wednesday and Friday, the regular Orthodox fast days. Special Paschal foods appear on the table every day. Red Easter eggs blessed at the night vigil are eaten too. Paschal means belonging to Pascha, the Greek name for Easter.

In Greek Easter traditions, the Artos is a large leavened loaf, meaning bread risen with yeast. Before baking, it is stamped with an icon of the Resurrection. The priest blesses it at the night vigil and sprinkles it with holy water. It then stays all week on a small table in front of the iconostasis.

• A greeting: Whenever the faithful enter the church that week, they kiss the Artos to greet the risen Christ.
• Daily procession: On each day of the week, the Artos goes in procession around the outside of the church.
• Bright Saturday: After the liturgy, the priest breaks the Artos and shares it with the whole congregation.

The 66th canon of the Council in Trullo, a church council, banned horse races during this week. In this sense, a canon is a church law. Greek Easter traditions also open the Pentecostarion with this week, a season of fifty days up to Pentecost.

How does Vrontados turn Greek Easter traditions into a rocket war?

Greek Easter traditions on Chios include Rouketopolemos, a name that means rocket war. The town of Vrontados holds it every year at Easter. It is a local variation on the Greek habit of setting off fireworks at the midnight Paschal Vigil.

Vrontados is a small coastal town on the eastern side of Chios. About 5,300 people live there. Its name is said to come from the sound of thunder echoing off nearby Mount Aepos. The Greek word for thunder is vronti. The town also has a strong tradition of merchant seafaring.

Greek Easter traditions here keep Orthodox Easter Day, set by the Julian calendar. The exact origins of the custom are unclear. Local legend dates it back to the Ottoman period. The Ottoman period was the era of Turkish rule. Folklore says the two sides once used real cannons, until a ban by Ottoman authorities in 1889.

In these Greek Easter traditions, rockets fly between two rival parishes, Saint Mark’s and Panagia Ereithiani. Panagia is a Greek title of the Virgin Mary, meaning All-Holy. Each church stands on its own hilltop, about 400 metres from the other. The next day, hits on the bell towers are said to be counted. Yet each parish always claims victory.

• Protection: Boards, metal sheets and mesh cover the churches and the buildings close by.
• Rocket design: Each rocket is a wooden stick carrying a head filled with gunpowder-based fuel.
• Launch ramps: Hundreds of rockets at a time leave from sloping platforms cut with grooves.

Both parishes then agree to settle the score at the following Easter. In this way, Greek Easter traditions in Vrontados carry on from year to year. The event was cancelled in 2016, then returned in 2017 with limits on its length and rocket numbers.

What do travellers ask about Greek Easter traditions, and what are the answers?

Greek Easter traditions honour the resurrection of Jesus, as the New Testament tells it. Resurrection means rising from the dead. Before the feast comes Lent, a season of 40 days of fasting, prayer and penance. Penance means acts that show sorrow for wrongdoing.

Why do Greek Easter traditions keep a different date from Western Easter?

Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the same Easter rule as Western churches. However, they take the date of 21 March from the Julian calendar. Because of a thirteen-day gap, 21 March Julian matches 3 April in the Gregorian calendar. The Julian tables of moon phases also run five days behind the Gregorian ones.

Where does the Holy Fire of Greek Easter traditions come from?

Orthodox Christians believe the Holy Fire is the blessed light of the risen Christ. After it is lit in Jerusalem, it travels to the seats of national churches, Athens among them. Where possible, this Holy Light reaches churches during Holy Saturday afternoon. It then lights anew the unsleeping flame on the altar.

Which sermon do Greek Easter traditions hear at the Easter night service?

The Paschal Homily is a sermon heard at Paschal Matins, the service that starts Easter. Church tradition names Saint John Chrysostom, who died in 407, as its writer. Scholars since Montfaucon have largely rejected that claim of authorship. By custom, no one sits while the homily is read.

Is the burning of Judas part of Greek Easter traditions?

In the burning of Judas, people set fire to an effigy, or model, of Judas Iscariot at Easter. The custom was once widely practised in Greece and other Christian lands. It is not an official church rite for Easter. As a rule, the effigy hangs on Good Friday and burns on Easter Sunday night.