Saturday 23 April 2011

It's Holy Saturday


So last night was when Jesus died on the cross. Most Greeks got up early this morning to go to Church again, where we took a spoonful of wine from the priest and a small piece of bread; these symbolise the blood and body of Christ, a complete cleansing of your sins! If you don't get to the Church early (that means way before 8am) then you will find a massive queue to get to the priest!


Also this morning, the Greek men of the family took a trip to the butchers for all the meat they're going to cook up tomorrow. Now, if they were clever they would have got there before 6am so they would only take an hour to get served... unfortunately as the day goes on you will notice every Greek butcher has got a queue about a mile long outside their shop! Happy days for the butcher but all the best meat goes quickly.


(Disclaimer: if the sight of dead animals offends you I should warn you, you won't get on with Greeks very well and for your own sanity you probably should get off this blog too as you won't like what is coming tomorrow...)


Tonight at midnight, is when midnight mass takes place; basically it's the moment when Christ was resurrected. Like last night's event, everyone gathers at church with an unlit candle. The priest then distributes the Holy Light to everyone. If you can get home with your candle still lit then you will have good luck that year!



There is a huge celebration at midnight when Christ is resurrected! Then everyone goes home and has their mageiritsa soup (a lovely concoction of lamb organs). Obviously, this is the first bit of meat that most Greeks will have had in 40 days so people really tend to look forward to that!


Finally there is the egg cracking competition, but I will leave that for tomorrow's post along with the trunk load of meat...!

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