Easter How do you and your families celebrate Easter? I would love to hear about how you celebrate...This year ds will be with his dad until noon time on Sunday....then when he gets home he will get to open his Easter basket...then we will have a quiet dinner or maybe out to eat with my parents. It's pretty much going to be a loy key holiday here.We are Orthodox and Easter is our biggest and most joyful religious holiday.  I can't say I observe Lent the way I used to, but we do anticipate Easter with great joy.  My son knows he's going to go venerate the Tomb of Christ on Good Friday and, at midnight on Saturday, participate in the wonderful Paschal service that declares "Christ is Risen!"  We walk outside around the church, carrying candles and singing hymns. We've allowed him to go since he was 10 or 11 and he SO looks forward to it.  We all do.  I spend the week leading up to Easter making traditional Russian Easter foods from scratch.  It's a lot of work, but I don't want the tradition to die. Our family is very small now compared to the big group that assembled when I was young.  But we observe the same traditions. For Easter dinner on Sunday, my husband, son and I will be joined by my husband's sister as well as a couple of friends.  My son SO looks forward to these traditional celebrations.  Now that he's 16, his autism-related picky eating has disappeared and he'll be inhaling everything!  I'd better make sure I cook enough.  When he was very small, we gave him an Easter basket and we did an Easter egg hunt with his cousin in the yard, but that gave way to traditional celebrations years ago.I'll chime in with another Orthodox Easter, this time Greek! My parents host the entire extended family to a huge feast. My Dad actually roasts the old fashioned entite rack of lamb over the spit. We eat all traditional foods and stuff ourselves with greek pastries. And, yes, we actually even do some greek dancing on the patio I don't go to church regularly, but the Midnight Service is the most beautiful and moving tradition in our culture. I always go. I can hardly wait til Jasper is old enough to wake up in the middle of the night to come too. When I was a kid, we would all go over to my "Yia Yia's" house afterward for a traditional soup and more pastries. It was so exciting to be up at 2am with all my relatives. Usually "American" easter and "Greek" Easter fall on different days, in which case we join in the neighborhood easter egg hunt. (Just a few families. We Started out about 4 years ago) We fill plastic easter eggs with small toys and favors, and have a potluck lunch. It really feels like spring Were Greek Orthodox too and Yia Yia makes Lamb and manestra(pasta) and spinokopita..dolmatas..ect..sweet easter bread and kourilakia's(?) cookies:) We also greet each other with "Christ is risen" and reply "INDEED HE HAS!" in Greek:) Another tradition is red easter eggs to symbolize the blood of Jesus and we each hold one and clank "end to end" with each other till it cracks and the one with the egg that remains uncracked will have good luck...love traditions! OPA!! We used to go to church and do what Tzoya church does but stopped...I miss making the palm crosses for palm sunday.  Maybe we will start up again..it has been a long time. We do a little easter egg hunt for Sarah but she rather hide them herself and let us find them ShelleyR39174.607662037We are doing a quiet easter this year.. My son has been having major behavioral issues the last month so i know my limits with him.. He will stay in and do a easter egg hunt and then eat breakfast mom's famous bunny pancakes.. Then get dressed and make a bunny cake then go to my in-laws for a quick dinner then come home because we leave for our first vacation since finding out the diagnosis for my son.. I hope all goes well.. Happy Easter everyone.. Enjoy your family time.. Wow, I thought the egg breaking thing was a RUSSIAN tradition. I didn't know the Greeks did it, too.  I was just thinking this afternoon that I have to get more red egg dye because they usually ask some of us ladies to provide a dozen red eggs to the church so the priest can give out eggs to every person who comes up to venerate the cross at the end of Paschal Liturgy. By that time, my family long gone.  My son loves the hour or so of Paschal Matins but couldn't tolerate ANOTHER couple of hours of Liturgy, so we go home around 1 a.m.  I'm the one who makes all the traditional foods except for the traditional pork sausage.  My sister makes that.  She lives 3 hours away and we meet halfway during the week before Easter. I trade her my homemade horseradish and she gives me the homemade sausage.  I think I get the better deal, but she HATES making the horseradish.  This year, we're not meeting, though, because she' still fighting the flu.  It's OK.  Most of the good stuff I make myself anyway.  We dye eggs using onion skins and they come out a brownish red...kinda like dried blood.  I think the Russians didn't have anything else closer to red.  For church, I'll use regular vegetable red dye. This year my son has finally gotten over some of his separation anxiety from me and I can leave the house and spend some significant time away without causing him to break down.  So I've signed up to read the gospels at the tomb on Sat. a.m. from 6 to 8.  I'm up anyway. It's nice to finally be able to participate in some of the spiritual life of the church without my 5th limb attached to me!  He has REALLY grown this year.  I have no clue on Russian food but the sausage sounds yummy:) We dye the eggs using ritt dye so they come out super RED~nobody eats them it is for symbolism only.  Some of the older Greek ladies make easter baskets out of sweet bread and fill them with the eggs to give one another~really sweet:) I miss church but not the long services...I like it at food festival time with all the dancing, food and wine  This year my kids are going camping with Grandma and Papa and leaving Friday morning. (That means Friday night is date night!) we are driving down to the lake where they are camping Saturday afternoon for dinner and a Easter egg hunt in the dark.  Then we will drive back and Sunday we will go to my Mothers for a Easter egg hunt with my side of the family and lunch.
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