EASTER

EASTER (Christ’s day, Resurrection of Christ, the Great day, Bright Christ’s Sunday) is the main Christian holiday dedicated to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is held the first Sunday after the spring new moon. People clean their houses, bake kulich cakes, cook cottage paskha dish, paint eggs (with onion husks, sandalwood, birch leaves, etc.) According to the newspapers of Orenburgskaya and Ufimskaya regions dated in the 18th – early 20th c., each Christian sought to celebrate E. in a church where at night people served a solemn Liturgy. After it was served, people went in sacred procession around the church and to neighbors’ houses while the church bells were ringing. There was a great celebration that included singing and dancing in Ufa forthe citizens and visitors from neighboring villages. Wooden swings with booths were installed everywhere. The youth and children and sometimes women would gather to play with Easter eggs: they would roll them from a mountain, watching whose egg would survive longer (Voznesyenka village, Duvanskiy district, etc.), drove eggs into holes (Molokanovo village, Kuyurgazinskiy district). The kryashen youth would have fun right after the service at local church – young men would uninstall the gates of the house of a girl which they like and install them as their own, and vice versa: girls would install the gates of a man’s house. During Easter week (mostly on Tuesday and Thursday) people would commemorate the dead and visit cemeteries. The Easter week was the start of spring-summer festivities of the youth, presentations of potential brides and newly married couples.

E. was celebrated in Bashkortostan even when religion was being fought over. Children and young people from Bashkir and Tatar families participated in E. celebration as a kind of a game in the  20th  c.:  they  would  gather  in groups, roll eggs from the hills; separate one by one and go to their Russian neighbors saying, “Christ is risen!”. E. became a common holiday. The orthodox believers put an Easter egg into the sacred Tomb until the next E. There is a belief that in case of fire the Easter egg can extinguish it. Historical and cultural centers, Sunday and art schools of RB celebrate E. painting the eggs – “pisankas”, drawing biblical themes, singing songs and reading poems. School students from German settlements of Bashkortostan create baskets with Easter eggs and hares – symbols of fertility and life. Germans believed that Easter painted eggs were not hatched by hens, but by hares and then hidden in safe places. The settlements of the republic hold festivities during E.

F.G. Galieva