Топик: Easter (Пасха)
This is a real egg, hard-boiled, died in bright colours, and sometimes elaborately decorated. In still appears upon countless breakfast-tables on Eater Day, or is hidden about the house and garden for the children to find. In some European countries, including England, the Easter Hare is said to bring the Easter eggs, and to conceal them in odd corners of the gardens, stables, or outbuildings.
Because eggs are obvious symbols of continuing life and resurrection, the pagan peoples of ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Persia used them, centuries before tile first Easter Day, at the great Spring Festivals, when the revival of all things in Nature was celebrated.
Colouring and decorating the festival eggs seems to have been customary since time immemorial. And old Polish legend says that Our Lady herself painted eggs red, blue, and green to amuse the Infant Jesus, and that since then all good polish mothers have done the same at Easter. A Romanian tale says that the vivid red shade, which is a favorite almost everywhere, represents the blood of Christ.
There are many ways of tinting and decorated the eggs, some simple and some requiring a high degree of skill. They can be dipped into a prepared dye or, more usually boiled in it, or they may be boiled inside a covering of onion-peel. Ordinary commercial dyes are often used today for coloring, but originally only natural ones, obtained from flowers, leaves, mosses, bark, wood-chips, or other sources, were employed. In England, gorse-blossom was commonly used for yellow, cochineal for scarlet, and logwood-chips for a rich purple.
In Switzerland, minute flowers and leaves are sometimes laid on the egg underneath the onion-peel to make a white flower-pattern on the yellow or brown surface.
The decoration of Easter eggs is a traditional peasant art in Eastern and Central Europe. Favorite designs vary in different regions. In Hungary, red flower-patterns on a white ground are often seen; sometimes the decorated eggs are fitted with tiny metal shoes, with minute spurs attached, and curious little metal hangers. In Yugoslavia, the letters XV usually form part of the design. They stand for Christos Vaskrese, meaning ‘Christ is risen’, which is the traditional Easter greeting of Easter Europe. Russian eggs are sometimes elaborately decorated with miniature picture of the saints, or of Our Lord. Polish designs are often geometrical, or abstract, or they may include Christian symbols, like the Gross or Fish, mixed with pagan emblems of new life. Painted eggs of this type, know as pisanki, always appear on the Easter Table.
In some East European countries, scarlet eggs, as symbols of resurrection, are placed on, or buried in, the graves of the family dead. The latter custom was known in northern England until about the middle of last century. One or two of the most beautifully ornamented Pace-eggs – the name by which Easter eggs are still most commonly called in the northern counties – would be saved and kept in tall ale – glasses in a corner cupboard, or some other place where they could be easily seen. In Scotland, Easter eggs are often called Peace or Paiss eggs. ‘Pace’ and ‘Paiss’ are all corruptions of Pasch, or Paschal, of which the original root is the Hebrew word pisach meaning Passover.
In parts of Germany during the early 1880s, Easter eggs substituted for birth certificates. An egg was dyed a solid color, then a design, which included the recipient’s name and birth date, was etched into the shell with a needle or sharp tool. Such Easter eggs were honored in law courts as evidence of identity and age.
Easter Bunny.
That a rabbit, or more accurately a hare, became a holiday symbol can be traced to the origin of the word “Easter”. According to the Venerable Bede, the English historian who lived from 672 to 735, the goddess Easter was worshiped by the Anglo – Saxons through her earthly symbol, the hare.
The custom of the Easter hare came to America with the Germans who immigrated to Pennsylvania in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
From Pennsylvania, they gradually spread out to Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, New York, and Canada, taking their customs with them. Most eighteenth – century Americans, however, were of more austere religious denominations, such as Quaker, Presbyterian, and Puritan. They virtually ignored such a seemingly frivolous symbol as a white rabbit. More than a hundred years passed before this Teutonic Easter tradition began to gain acceptance in America. In fact, it was not until after the Civil War, with its Legacy of death and destruction, that the nation as a whole began a widespread observance of Easter it self, led primarily by Presbyterians. They viewed the story of resurrection as a source of inspiration and renewed hope for the millions of bereaved Americans.
V. Thoughts from Ireland.
By tradition, Good Friday has always been a day of mourning and fasting, for decorating churches with branches of yew (palm) and other evergreens, and the ceremonial distribution of gifts to the poor.
Many Christians fast and attend services between noon and 3 p. m., the hours Jesus is believed to have spent on the cross, since the day commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus.
On Easter Sunday the churches are beautifully decorated with white lilies. Joyful religious music is heard and sermons ring with hope. Children and their parents traditionally attend church, usually wearing new spring clothes. The mothers and their daughters wear colorful flowered hats. Many other traditions and popular customs, which probably go back to pagan times, are also associated with Easter throughout Europe, for example, the sending of Easter cards and the giving of Easter eggs. Eggs are a symbol of life and fertility or recreation of spring. It was not however until the 19th century, that the practice of giving and exchanging eggs at Easter was introduced in England.
Easter custom, the barrels are gratefully emptied by the participants. In London there is Easter Parade in Battersea Park. What used to be merely an occasion for sporting the latest fashions in the park on Easter Sunday has now developed into one of the most spectacular carnival processions of the year, with military bands, decorated floats, Easter Princess, and all.
Another thing English people traditionally eat at Easter is hot cross-buns. One would hardly use them to cure whooping cough, but in bygone days buns, which had been baked on Good Friday, were thought to have magical healing powers. Because of the spices they contain, hot cross-buns seldom go moldy, and even today country housewives hang a few from the kitchen beams to dry. When needed, the buns can be powdered, mixed with milk or water and given as a medicine. Of course, for the magic cure to work, they have to be buns that were actually baked on Good Friday. For Easter dinners at family reunions Englishmen traditionally eat baked ham or chicken with a famous English apple-pie to follow/
For a good apple pie you will need:
1 lb apples (500 gm)
4 oz flour (100 gm)
2 oz butter or margarine (50 gm)
3 oz sugar (75 gm)
2 oz sultans (50 gm)
1 oz chopped nuts (25 gm)
1-teaspoon cinnamon.
Now you can make a real English apple – pie. Here are the instructions. Put them in the correct order, and number the instructions 1 to 6:
Mix the nuts, sultanas, cinnamon and half the sugar with the apples. Bake in a medium oven (300F) for 30 minutes. Peel and core the apples. Cut them into small pieces and put them into a baking dish. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl. Sprinkle the mixture over the apples.
Rub the soft butter into the flour with your finger – tips. When the butter melts, the mixture will look like bread – crumbs. Add the rest of the sugar. And now serve the pie hot with cream. Enjoy it! And as Russians say, Christ is risen! Expecting the answer, Christ is risen indeed!
VI. Easter in England.