You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Eastern Orthodox Church’ tag.
Alas, I got distracted eating the chocolate eggs that my American roommates’ parents sent last Sunday and (for a fourth year in row) forgot to paint some eggs for my own Easter! (Bulgarians are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians and celebrate Easter together with the Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Ukrainians, and Russians. This year, our Easter is on April 15th)
So instead, I decided to post a few beautiful photos of painted Easter eggs. Enjoy!
The way you make these patterns is by wrapping a leaf around the egg using a stocking to hold it fixed and dipping it in a jar of food paint
The way you make this pattern is by pouring different paints in a piece of cotton and wrapping the egg in the cotton. It looks like a colorful cloud, doesn't it?
These you make by "painting" lines and shapes with a candle and dipping the egg in the paint. There will be white lines where the wax touched the egg. Coat the color with wax and dip the egg in another color to add more layers to your painting. Bravo, Picasso!
Leaving the religious significance of this day aside, Easter is one of my favorite family holidays! Read more about my family’s celebrations here. The whole extended family gets together for a huge party. The centerpiece of the feast is the whole slow-roasted lamb and my grandmother’s amazing traditional Easter sweet bread with rum and dried fruit), kozunak (see a recipe).
The most fun part of the day is the egg fights (read my instructions) where you duel with painted eggs – the egg that survives without a crack is the champion!
How did you celebrate Easter this year?
Happy Easter!
My friends from Boston, MA and Albany, NY, Maura and Bailey, are visiting me in Bulgaria for a week! Just in time to witness an Easter celebration – Eastern European style.
Probably the strangest thing they did today was an Easter egg fight! As part of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, we paint hard boiled eggs and fight with them:
- Find the “sharp” end of the egg
- Wrap your fist around the egg, with the sharp end pointing downwards
- Hit the “blunt” side of your opponent’s egg with your sharp side
- If you cracked their egg, you are the winner. If not, you lose this round.
- Then turn your egg around and offer your blunt end for hitting
- You opponent will hit you with their sharp end
- The winner from the match keeps fighting other eggs until there is one egg champion.
- The best part, you get to eat all your cracked eggs!
- Ways to cheat: get a wooden egg and paint it as an Easter egg or find a duck egg, which is typically a little big bigger and much stronger.
We don’t have the Easter Bunny, egg hunts around the garden, or as much chocolate as they have in the States on this holiday, but our egg fights, the Easter feast, and the family gathering definitely make Easter one of the best holidays in Bulgaria!
***
Read more about our Bulgaria Trip:
Zikata's Blog 
Recent Comments