I hope you all had a good Easter, didn’t do much here, actually it was like a normal weekend for me as I worked most of Good Friday and today!
Greeks take Easter very seriously though, it’s a bigger celebration than Christmas with lots of church services and the church bells ringing every hour on Good Friday. Saturday at midnight (after more church services) there are fireworks and the men fire guns. Then Easter Sunday or sometimes today, Monday there are family “get togethers” / parties with roast lamb (or goat) on a spit and maybe some more firing of guns. Yep, it gets pretty noisy, don’t get me started on the noise those church bells make!
Going back to the gun thing, practically every Cretan man owns a gun, good for firing at signposts, into the sky on New Year and Easter, on poor unsuspecting animals (aka cats) and of course occasionally at each other. I’m really not making it up, my ex boyfriend used to have a gun in his car at all times incase it was “needed”.
Easter eggs are not widely available here (unless you count the chocolate bunnies in Lidl and the expensive ones in the bakery) we certainly don’t get rows and rows like in the U.K supermarkets, I presume because Easter is to be taken seriously and not turned into a chocolate gimmick.
They do have a tradition of dying hard boiled eggs red and then “knocking” them against the other persons, I think it goes if you are the last one with the egg/shell still “intact” you have good luck for the rest of the year.
This explains why on Thursday a man in the supermarket was checking all the eggs in the carton … He didnt want to start off with a cracked or “weak” egg!!
Anyway… If there any Greeks reading this who would like to comment / correct me / elaborate some more on the ways of Greek Easter then please do so
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