Great Thursday

I've mentioned before that the Easter in Eastern Orthodox Church falls differently then the Catholic traditional one. There are several different explanations why, but one that is the easiest is that Eastern Orthodox Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon after march 22. There. Easy, right?

This year's Easter falls on April 15th, which means that right now we are in the Holy Week - one of the most intense weeks of the Lent ( and the last one too). I think , it's my favorite one of all. Apart from being filled with simply transforming services,  this week has a lot of fun traditions to go with.

Today is the Great Thursday.

Great Thursday - also often called Clean Thursday - is the day that really marks the beginning of the Easter and the end of the Lent. Apart from church services, traditionally it's filled with deep cleaning, particularly windows ( hence the name) ,  cooking of non-fasting ( read regular) foods ( but not eating - fun, ha!) , and , of course, specialty Easter foods like Easter bread and colored eggs, traditionally red.

The symbolism of the red egg takes it root in a tale that when Mary Magdalena gave a gift of an egg to an emperor as a symbol of Resurrection of Christ, he laughed and said that as a white egg could never turn red, dead could never become alive again. The egg turned red in his hand as he said those words.
Traditionally now eggs represent the droplets of blood that cleanse us.

{imgs source}

So, in case you were wondering where I'm disappearing these days - you can find me cleaning, cooking, coloring, while feeding, rehearsing, and going to services. In other words , preparing for Easter.

 {imgs source}

What are you up to these days?