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Many people are not properly informed about Easter in Crete Greece. This page explains Easter in more detail! Here you can really feel the atmosphere of Easter. Nowhere in the world will you experience Easter week as intense as in Greece. The countryside is beautiful this time of year. From the Monday before Easter every day is named a “great” day, Great Monday etc. On all the “great” days it’s nice to visit and experience the atmosphere in the villages.
There is an enormous amount of activity in the villages. Almost all the villages have an Easter fire. The Easter fire is lit on Great Saturday. The youth is busy for the whole week searching for and collecting wood. In each village the pyre is greater than the other and there is a friendly rivalry between the villages who has the biggest fire. The disturbing bit about the collection of the firewood is that there are then already a lot of fireworks in the air. During the initial part of Easter it is worthwhile to make the effort to sit in the market square of the villages. Old women walk by with their homemade bread. Their traditional Easter bread is baked in the local baker’s oven.
On Good Friday (Great Friday) everybody goes to church in the evening. The priest walks in front with a symbolic sarcophagus of Christ behind him. The young boys that carry this beautifully decorated sarcophagus are almost always the ones that go to do their military service that year. This is an unwritten village rule. They will visit all the chapels and churches of the village. The old women stoop under the sarcophagus, in hope of a miracle. When the procession returns to the church where they began then everyone goes home. At home the Greeks often eat a salad with fish soup. On Great Saturday begins the proper Easter party.
After 40 days of fasting (usually only the older people will fast) everyone can have meat and milk again. On Saturday evening at 12 O’clock “Christ shall stand up”, calls the priest. But it must be said that the priest is almost always inaudible, because as he comes out of the church the fireworks burst free.
The air is lit red and there is a loud banging. In the earlier years people did this with pistols. Everyone now goes with a candle into the church and gets a light from the priest... This is the fire from Jerusalem. Then everyone walks home with in their hands a burning candle. What you see then is really interesting: people drive home from the church by car to see to it that the candles don’t blow out. Cars with burning candles in it: anything is possible in Greece. When arriving home people burn a black cross above their door with the candle, hoping that with this gesture, they will have a good year! What a year they will have, if the candle is blown out! Take note if you are in Greece some day, you’ll regularly come across a black cross above the door.
Afterwards, the eggs are broken, egg against egg. Dinner is then served and yet more food will be served until late in the evening. The old tradition of Easter Day is still a fantastic party! The lamb will be put on the spit and a fire wood from the olives and grapes will be made. It’s a real art to get the lamb just right. The lamb must be turned (for the best result by hand) for 6 hours. So the Easter lamb has to go over the fire at 8 O’clock in the morning. The first wine will also be drunk quiet early. At one or two o’clock in the afternoon the family gathers round the table, with the pleasant sound of Cretan music everywhere. And on Monday this party will be repeated one more time!
Happy Easter in Gournes Crete Greece to everyone & Jamas!
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