Preparation for Easter

In this part of the world, Easter is just about the most important time of year. It's not all about bunnies and candy, as the secular culture of the USA has made it. Instead, it is a mixture of highly-serious religious observation and light-hearted family and community celebration. I have yet to experience either aspect of the holiday, first-hand, so I'll wait to explain the history, ceremony, and customs of Moldovan Easter until after Sunday. Right now, people are preparing. And how!

Maybe "preparing" is too soft a word. It's more like turning the houses upside down in a spring cleaning to trump all spring cleanings, and preparing for the biggest and most wonderful feast possibly imaginable. The cleaning doesn't require further explanation. Everything must be proudly sparkling and brimming with pure cleanliness before Christ rises. I'm still not fully on-board with this concept, but I guess I understand why it is important the others.

The most visible (and curious) aspect of this pre-Easter cleaning is to be found on the roads. Every respectable curb is coated a brilliant, shining white. Or, at least, it is brilliant and shining for about a day. The curbs are not painted with "paint" per se; rather, they are whitewashed with what seems to be a chalky water. I'm pretty sure this is the same annoying substance covering the walls of most non-wallpapered rooms (such as schools). Benefit: it's cheap and easy to apply. Reason it's not worth it: it's chalk. A brief and gentle grazing of a wall covered in this stuff leaves an embarrassing white mark on everything. But to paint a curb with this chalk is a whole new level of senseless, as the first wash of rain strips away 100% of the glorious whiteness. Well, but it looks good for a few days, so there you have it.

The food is another matter, though. While I may feel ambivalent about the cleaning and the white curbs, the culinary exposé of tomorrow's holiday is entirely something to be anticipated with glee and rumbling stomach. Said rumbling stomach is amplified by the period of fasting leading up to Easter, known in Romanian as "Post" (equivalent to Catholic Lent, but much more extreme: people are strict vegans for over a month). Moldova has a rich tradition of sweet cakes, roasted meats, knotted breads, and excessively sugary candies with which to break Post ("post" with a lower-case 'p' simply means "fast"). The last day of Post, today (Saturday), people are supposed not to eat for the entire day, until after the mid-night Easter service. Then, immediately after the service (which ends around 6:00am), each household digs into the biggest masa (feast, or literally "table") of the year. Oh boy!

I'll be attending the Easter services, here, and I am very excited -- not just for the food, and certainly not for these spring cleaning rites. This will be my first Orthodox service since I arrived, and I am very much interested in learning more about this particular faith, and perhaps partaking in regular services and even a catechumin.

That's all for now. More on Easter after the fact, so stay tuned.