Hope for salvation

So my first (official) Orthodox Easter(Pascha) has come and gone, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Good Friday passed in solitude, because my husband had an E.R. shift, and I didn’t see fit to find my way to a litany service on my own. Luckily, two church processions passed right in front of our apartment building, one stopping at the corner for a bit to sing the melancholy elegy, so I could look over the balcony in quiet observation.

Saturday night we proceeded to the resurrection service. The one we attended just happened to be at the same church we were married in. This experience seemed to justify my core belief that I am better off as a distant observer of such services. When it was time to light our Easter candles with the so-called holy light, it seemed that mine would extinguish almost immediately, but by some miracle it stayed lit. Then, a piece of the wick had broken off and attached itself lower on the candle, which started burning anew when the candle burned down a bit, and for a brief moment I could see the headline “Heretic Girl Dies, Consumed By Holy Flame”, as the burning wick flew off the candle. Thankfully it hit the floor and extinguished itself immediately, averting certain disaster.

I did not follow the crowd of people outside to watch the actual resurrection, because there were just waaaay too many people, and at my height I would surely end up wedged beneath someone’s sweaty armpit and an oversprayed hairdo about to explode from the heat of the candles. The sound system wasn’t working properly, so the priest’s voice scratched as it came in and out of the speakers. Finally, Christ was resurrected, the bells were rung in jubilation, and everyone returned to the church, where family all greeted one another with the traditional Easter greeting. When Uncle George approached me, instead of saying Χριστός Ανέστη (Christ has risen) he said, in heavily Greek accented English, “Christ stood up”, which sent my mother-in-law into a fit of giggles I wasn’t sure she would recover from. After a few more moments of pleasant, Dead Can Dance-ish singing from the priests, we left to go to my in-law’s apartment and enjoy a one a.m. meal celebrating the resurrection and the breaking of the forty day fast some Orthodoxites endure. I don’t think I saw people enjoy meat and cheese more than these relatives, some of whom actually had been fasting the whole time.

Today we headed to Easter dinner at Uncle George and Aunt Sophie’s beautiful home. I was fearful of seeing a lamb or goat turning on a roaster outside upon approaching the house, but got lucky, they were cooking it in the oven and the fireplace, no big skewer or whole animal present. I didn’t get lucky when I spotted the goat head on the dinner table, and almost ran screaming and pulling out my hair in distress, but I gouged my eyes out instead. Oedipal references aside, the head disappeared by the time I looked at that part of the table again, so I guess someone got head. Goat tastes remarkably like pork, by the way, in case you were wondering. And goat intestines taste just like liver. I’m still trying to get the taste out of my mouth. Too much homemade dessert and a few sing alongs with the guitar later it was time to go home. Easter was officially over.

Καλό Πάσχα to all my Orthodox friends. I hope yours was filled with as much love as mine was.