Romania - Special Edition
Easter in Romania
Easter in Romania is celebrated according to the rituals of the
Eastern Orthodox Church. The Friday before the Easter is called the Great Friday or the Friday of sufferings, as it is the day when Jesus was crucified. On Saturday, people go to church for the midnight mass, taking with them a bowl of
Pasca, eggs and steak, where these aliments are blessed by the clergy. On returning home from the mass, people first eat some of the sanctified aliments and only then the rest.
Starting with Holy Thursday, people start painting eggs in a multitude of colors. The predominant color is red, but other colors are also applied - yellow, green, blue and even black. Decorated eggs or
'oua incondeiate' are an integral part of Easter celebration in Romania. The eggs are decorated using a type of thin and round sticks called chisita, made of beech wood.
The special Easter cake, known as Pasca, is baked on Great Thursday. The Pasca can have a round shape (reminding little Jesus' diapers) or a rectangular one (the shape of His grave). The shells of the eggs used for the Pasca are thrown in a river. This action stems from the ancient belief that the shells are taken by the river to the country of the Good People, announcing them the Easter has came.
In some regions (
Bucovina,
Transylvania), there is a tradition called "the wetting". On Monday morning, the boys take a bucket of water and go to the houses of the unmarried girls. If they found them sleeping, the boys throw water on them. As it is believed that those girls will marry soon, they reward the boys who had wetted them by giving them the most beautiful decorated eggs and Pasca or cake.
Dyed eggs are traditional food at Easter, but of course in this category we cannot include the beautiful hand painted eggs, which are emptied of their contents. Such eggs
are purely decorative. Everywhere in Romania, in the Great Thursday, eggs are dyed in red, yellow, green, blue or black, each of these colors having its special meaning, for example red stands obviously for the blood of Christ, green is a symbol of passing from Winter to Spring and black stands for Jesus suffering on the cross.
Related to eggs we should not forget the traditional custom of knocking the eggs. This starts the first day of Easter and it continues till the Great Sunday. When cracking eggs the two parts involved should say
“Christ is risen!”, and the answer to this is
“He is truly risen!” - this is also the greeting that replaces the common “hello” till the Great Sunday. There are many superstitions related to this custom, one saying that the one whose egg cracks first will die younger than his oponent.
And speaking about traditional food, probably the most important “dishes” are Pasca (a version of cheesecake) and
Cozonaci (
Romanian Panettone - variations of sweet bread in different shapes round or rectangular, symbolizing Christ’s grave – but the difference is that they are not an exclusive Easter dish, being also prepared for Christmas, weddings and other important celebrations).
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