Armenian Easter Tradition

Hello my reader, after celebrating Easter with full enthusiasm, I am back to my blog, for sharing with you a tradition of Armenian Easter celebration. So today I will tell you, how we Armenians are  celebrating Easter? What are the traditional Easter dishes which we cook that day and how different is Armenian Easter tradition from others?

 Easter, also called Pascha Resurrection Sunday is a festival and Holiday celebrating resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described as having occurred on the third day of his burial after his crucifixion.
Easter and holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, which do not fall in a fixed date in the Gregorian and  Julian calendars, which follow only the cycle of the sun, rather its date is determined on a lunisolar calendar similar to the Hebrew calendar.  So it has come to be the first Sunday, after the ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after 21st of March. Easter customs are vary across the Christian world and that is regarded to traditional Easter food as well.

   

The Armenian Apostolic church celebrates Easter according to the Gregorian calendar. This holiday is one of the five major feasts of the Armenian church and its called "Zatik" which means "relief from suffering".

(Just to remind )Armenian is  the oldest Christian country in the world, accepting Christianity as an Official religion in 301 AD.

  Armenia has got its own traditions for Easter Celebration.The festival starts from Saturday evening, when people go to the churches and bring lights and willow branches to the home. The church blesses this branches and you need to keep it till next Easter and then replace them with new one. Then its starts the preparation for traditional foods.

 As in every Christian culture we also color the eggs. Eggs symbolize the empty tomb, and red is a color of the sun, but some says its symbolise blood of Jesus. The part of  traditional Easter dishes come also  rice pulav with raisins, which symbolises people and faith, raw and cooked greens, has the meaning of new life, Easter cake with white frosting, symbolises purity, fish, (some believe that it has been used by early Christians ) red wine, which symbolises Jesus blood, Armenian lavash.
 Before in Armenia Easter eggs were dyed red using the traditional method of immersing them in an infusion of red onion skins, but nowadays there are many other ways and colors  to decorate Easter Eggs.

 In Armenian Easter the most enjoyable moment is egg-tapping, when one holds the egg in hand and the second person taps their egg. If you crack the other person's eggshells first without breaking your own, you win and get their egg. You  keep doing this until the person with the most eggs wins.
This is how we celebrate Easter in Armenia. I believe every country has it own tradition for celebration but overall its a happy and colorful festival, and here it is the way we celebrated it in Delhi with friends.

Happy Easter to Everyone