Digital-magazine_1

Romanian Easter custom
Easter is one of the most important and
beautiful Christian holidays in Romanian
tradition. It has the gift of bringing the family
together and it has a lot of customs involving
everyone.
The red painted eggs is one of the most spread
traditions of the Romanian Easter. The eggs are
always present on the table during the holiday.
Women started painting eggs in red in the
Thursday before Easter. The Easter eggs are
dyed red to represent the blood of Christ shed at his crucifixion. The decorations
are usually geometric, various shapes of flowers and animals. To achieve this, the
peasants use the simplest tool (called kishitze/condei), a stick with an iron tip.
With this, they apply molten wax on the desired pattern of the egg. Then they dip
the egg in the red color. When heated, the protective wax melts away, then the
egg is polished with oil or bacon to be shiny.
This is still done in every Romanian family, using a simple method, by dipping the
boiled eggs into a pot with food dye.
The tradition says that people who knock eggs in the first day of Easter will see
each other after death. The first person who knocks the egg says ‘Christ has
resurrected’ (in Romanian, ‘Cristos a înviat’), while the second one goes “True, he
has resurrected” (in Romanian, ‘Adevarat a
înviat’).
In the first day of Easter, the children wash their
face with fresh water from the fountains, in
which they put a red egg, a currency and green
grass or flower petals. It is been said that those
who wash their face like that, will be healthy
and beautiful all the year.
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