“Christ is Risen!” - with such joyful words we begin to meet the bright holiday of Easter or the resurrection of our Savior Christ. On the bright Sunday of Christ, it is customary to rejoice and talk after a strict seven-week fast. Tables are filled with delicacies, among which are the unchanged dishes of the holiday - Easter cakes, Easter from cottage cheese and colored eggs. People have fun and Christ, children play. But how many of us remember what the story of Easter really is?
If we turn to the Bible, we will see that Easter is a celebration of the deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery. The story of Easter mentions that the Egyptian king, despite the predictions of Moses, who was chosen by God as a prophet, did not want to let the Jews out of slavery. Then God helped the Jews free themselves by instructing them to anoint the doors of their homes with the blood of a young lamb. At night, an angel walked through Egypt and killed all the first-born, but did not touch the blood-marked dwellings. Frightened, the pharaoh expelled the Jews, but quickly came to his senses and set off after them, but God pushed the waters of the Red Sea and led the Jews along its bottom, and the pharaoh drowned in the abyss. Since then, Jews have been celebrating Easter.
Today, each of the areas of faith has its own Easter: Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish. However, this holiday has not lost its strength and solemnity.
It is noteworthy that this holiday does not have a specific date, but every year passes on one of the spring Sundays. A week before the holiday, people pluck willow twigs and put them at home in the water, so this Sunday is called Palm. It is believed that it was the willows that paved the way for the savior of the human race to Jerusalem. Starting from Palm Sunday, each day of the week is Holy Week. At this time, Christians prepare for a great holiday, clean their homes, bake Easter cakes and paint eggs. It is believed that all this must be done before Friday, which is preceded by Clean Thursday. Today, many perceive Pure Thursday as a day on which it is necessary to wash the house and all family members, but Easter history recalls that Pure Thursday serves, first of all, to cleanse not the body, but the soul, for confession and prayer, for repentance and communion . Good Friday - marks the death of Christ crucified on Mount Calvary. Great Saturday is a special day when believers can come to the cave of the Holy Sepulcher and see the blessed fire that arises every year at this time on its own. On the same day, the consecration of Easter food takes place in the church, and at midnight a procession is held. And on Easter Day, the bell-ringing Annunciation sounds in a special way.
The story of Easter confirms that on Sunday, on the third day of Jesus' death, the cave in which the Lord’s son was buried and which was guarded by the guards was empty. Some sources mention that the doctor Hermidius, who came to the cave on Sunday morning, saw a luminous figure of a man above the ground, according to another version, women who came to the cave with incense for the body of the savior found that Christ's body was lost. One thing remains unchanged - Jesus rose from the dead. And since then people have been celebrating his resurrection, calling him “Easter.” The history of the holiday has led to the emergence of many traditions and customs.
So, for example, there was a custom to paint eggs. The Easter story mentions that when the emperor Tiberius, who doubted the words of St. Mary, exclaimed that a person cannot be resurrected, just as a white egg does not turn red, the Lord performed a miracle, and the white egg turned red. There is a simpler explanation for this tradition. The ban on eating eggs during the fasting led to the fact that people holding chickens noticed that if the eggs are peeled in the husks of onions, they can be stored for one to two weeks.
In the morning, people are christened, exchanged eggs, kiss three times. They arrange competitions, beat with colored eggs, and the one who has the whole egg left takes the “beaten” eggs. The kids arrange rolling eggs from a hill. The egg that has rolled the farthest belongs to the winner. Everyone believes that on Easter you can see a miracle. They say that in the early morning you can catch the moment when "the sun is playing."