Christ Is Risen Today!

I am posting from Karlovo, my birthplace. I came back to my parents' house two days ago and will stay till Tuesday morning when I will head to Sofia again! My travel's purpose was the greatest Christian holiday and I feel there is something I have to clarify - Orthodox Easter is always on a different date from the Western World's Easter. As you know it is not a fixed date. Usually we, as Bulgarians and Orthodox, celebrate it a week after Western world, and very rare have it on the same date.

"The Orthodox religious calendar does not match to the Western calendar. A big part of this difference rests with the fact that Julius Caesar’s calendar (the Julian calendar) was inaccurate. At the end of the 15th century Pope Gregory XIII adjusted the calendar. What happened? A new calendar was adopted (the Gregorian calendar) to make up for the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar and on October 5th, 1582 everyone went to bed but when they woke up the next day it was October 14th. (This is kind of strange but okay.)Well, the Western churches adopted the Gregorian calendar while the Orthodox church still follows the Julian calendar. But get this, apparently the Bulgarian Orthodox Church “determines its movable feasts, such as Easter, using the Julian, and its fixed holidays, such as Christmas, using the Gregorian calendar” (this is the scintific explanation I found in an English newspaper in Bulgarian)

My Easter celebration starts in the midnight time on SAt 18th 12 am when the priest from the church near my place gathers with his colleague from the upper church at Vasil Levski square - a place in te mid way between the two churches and only 100 meters away from my birth house! A lot of peple from the whole town gather on the square to listen to priest's songs. At 12 am straight he says "Christ is risen" (Hristos voskrese) three times and we, the audience, reply to his words with "Christ is risen indeed!" (Voistina voskrese)

Then starts a fight with colored eggs - a pagan tradition, that, as Andrew told me, only takes place in the Eastern European countries, more or less in the Orthdox tradition. In the USA, I know they color eggs too but parents hide them in the garden for children to seek for them.

We, however, bang with them and eat them. Immediately after priest's words at midnight every one is supposed to bang with someone else hard-boiled colored eggs. My egg turned out to be the winner, the "borets" as we call it, and to smash my dad's two times and my mom's once. YAY!! The one whose egg is the strongest will be the healthiest throughout the year! We give eggs as presents to anyone we go to too.

Along with this tradition, another one also takes place - the kozunak eating. Kozunak is a sweet bread you can buy all year round in a store. Around Easter, however, these become bigger. The bread symbolizes Christ's body so it is a must for the holiday table as well! My mom can prepare kozunatsi at home, so every year I ask her to make them (although it is hard work) rather than we buy - I always prefer homemade to manufactured! I love it and I even replace braed with kozunak during these days. This is weird though, and no one does it!

So, I am celebrating Easter today and tomorrow, on Apr 20th too. That means that my parents are off and we are going to visit grandma and grandpa - we already were there on Friday! Then we might head to the mountains - my town lies on the outskirts of the biggest mountain range that separates my whole country into two parts - Northern, more severe weatherwise, and Southern, milder, my part. This the range that gives the name for the whole penninsula - The Balkan Penninsula.