I was born and raised an Orthodox. My parents were never extremely religious and as a result, neither am I, but I respect it and I love the traditions I grew up with. Easter – from a religious point of view – is probably one of the most important celebrations.
First of all, let me begin with some essential knowledge about Easter:
- Easter is celebrated on a different date each year;
- Catholics and Orthodox usually celebrate Easter on different dates for each religion, due to the different algorithm of determining when Easter will be celebrated;
- Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Now that we’ve settled this down…
Romanian people are Ortodox, like Russian and Greek people.
… which means that we celebrate Easter on a different date than… pretty much the other cultures. The Catholic Easter is one week before the Orthodox one or vice versa depending on what you prefer. But the big question is:
How do Romanians Celebrate Easter?
Let’s start with some basic knowledge:
- we celebrate is for three days (just like Christmas);
- the first two days are legally free days;
- the first day of Easter is always on a Sunday – this is probably not new;
One of my favourite part of Easter is, of course, the food. Although the main dish is made out of lamb, my Mum uses other types of meat instead.
The traditional dishes are:
- red painted (boiled) eggs
- cottage cheese pie
- lamb roast
- and the most Eastery dish is the drob.
Originally drop recipe is made of lamb organs mixed with herbs, spring onions, and – my favourite thing – whole eggs in the meat mixture (like in the picture below). As I mentioned I don’t really like lamb. We usually have it with chicken or turkey (not crazy about pork either).
The church considers resurrection as a supernatural event that needs to be celebrated properly. So in terms of religious traditions, Easter is quite special. I personally love Christmas more, but…
Related Read
Traditions
On Easter Eve, at midnight everyone is going to the church to take the holy light. We bring home the candles lit by the holy light. It’s said that you should let the light burn for three days. Depending on the region, customs might be different, but everyone goes to the church at midnight.
On Easter morning the first one who wakes up, puts water, two eggs (one plain and one red) and a coin in a bowl. Each member of the family will rub the coin and eggs on their faces when they wake up and the last member to wake up gets the coin – I know that it sounds weird to rub an egg on your face, but it’s quite pampering. Oh, and we eat the food that Mum spent one week to put together.
We’ve recently started to “import” the Easter Egss treasure hunting. When I was a kid we didn’t have that, but I noticed that nowadays parents held Easter eggs hunting for their kids.
I personally prefer Christmas against Easter. To me, Christmas was always more magical than Easter.
What Easter traditions and foods do you have in your country? Let me know in the comments down below!
23 comments
Easter in my family is usually just the church service now. When we were younger Easter egg hunts were a big thing. When we were younger we got a new church outfit (dress for me). Now I just wear a dress that I haven’t worn yet.
We have the “new outfit” thing too. There is not any superstitions about this, I think we just want to look good.
I love hearing how other people celebrate holidays!
xoxo, SS
Southern And Style
What a fascinating post. I’m Polish, so we have a few similar traditions. But I don’t have a BIT of Romanian in my blood so this is mostly new to me!
Coming Up Roses
Those eggs look stunning! Never heard of that tradition before myself actually.. We usually have an Easter brunch with my family, but there’s no specific food that’s supertraditional. In Ireland (where I live now) they do like hot cross buns as well as various meals with lamb (which I love!)
I had no idea there were different traditions. That’s really neat!
Wow it is so cool to learn about Easter in different countries. That is so interesting with the coin and the egg!
Thanks for sharing! It’s always cool to get to know other people’s traditions.Since we color eggs (even though it’s not at all connected to the religious holiday) there is always deviled eggs and potato salad to use them up.
I lived in Romania for two Easters, and I loved them! I love the red eggs and the ciocnire game, which my husband (he also spent some time in Romania) and I have tried to do with our children.
Isus a inviat!
Adevarat a inviat! 🙂
Thanks for sharing how Romanians celebrate Easter! I love hearing about other people’s traditions for holidays 🙂
– Kristen
http://www.sophisticatedgal.com
Being a Muslim, I don’t celebrate easter though I do love to eat cross bun when I visit friends that celebrate it.
That’s so nice! Do you have an alternative celebration for Easter (not an expert in mulsim, obviously) or something like that?
Yeah. We celebrate 2 eids.
In my country, we also celebrate Easter. We have tradition in the Easter morning go to church so that all food is blessed. But, traditional dishes vary depending on which part of the country you live in. I also prefer Christamas. This is very interesting I didn’t know that our country have so many similarity 😀
A few years ago as part of my Digital marketing job i have to look into how Italian celebrate Easter for a client. So I find it really interesting how different culture and different countries celebrate Easter. Interesting post. xx | http://www.annanuttall.com
Hey this is great! It’s gonna be a great lesson for my students 🙂
That’s amazing! Never thought this info could be included in some schools class. Hope they will like it!
It’s so interesting to learn your traditions! The coin on the face was a new one to me. We dye eggs colorfully here in the U.S. but not necessarily red. The big Sunday meal in our family on Easter usually consists of ham and sides like steamed green beans and another veggie, plus biscuits (we’re Southerners).
erin | sandsunandmessybuns.com
Sounds quite a light Easter meal to me. We have a looot of food, it’s part of who we are.
I’m curious what you mean by the days of Easter being ‘legally free’ days? Is that like a national holiday where most businesses are closed? Or something else?
Yes. Well Sunday is usually a free weekend day for a lot of people, but for those that work on Sundays as well, they get a holiday leave day. The same thing is available for Monday. It’s a long weekend for Easter holiday.