March 2009

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and livestock. This is quite a magical few minutes and one that few of us will ever forget.

For many, Easter day is the best day of the year. Goats & lambs are  

We have talked about the joy of Clean Monday but, before our next magazine, Greeks everywhere will be celebrating the biggest religious event of the year – Easter. From Clean Monday until the week of Easter, a period of six weeks, things in Greece become generally calmer and the commemorations begin on Palm Sunday with daily, well-attended church services until the big day itself. On Thursday morning, for example, the service remembers the Last Supper & the Betrayal. It is the day that hard-boiled eggs are dyed red to signify the blood of Christ and the special plaited Easter bread, tsoureki, is baked. It is on this night that some churches keep an all-night vigil.

roasted, friends & families come to-gether and every-body eats, drinks, dances and talks. Even for those of us who have never had a particular religious leaning, one cannot help but get swept up by the whole joyous experience.

On Saturday night, most people go to church and, as midnight comes, the priest announces that ‘Christ has Risen’ – ‘Christos anesti’. Candles are lit from the holy flame, then one from another and, as the glow in the church      

increases, the bells ring out in celebration. At this point everybody heads off home to end their period of fasting and, as they arrive, they trace out the shape of the cross with their lighted candles over their doorways and bless their trees      

In 2008, easyJet’s new service to Corfu made Easter in Roda more accessible than ever before and they will be flying again this year. Most of the village will still be closed, but the weather can be superb in April and there are enough bars, coffee shops &           

restaurants open to satisfy most needs. Above all, the people of the village, the ones that most of us regard so dearly, will all be here celebrating. Why not come and join them – they’re sure to make you welcome – after all, you are family?

Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday this year is on April 19.

Many visitors to Roda have expressed a wish to be in the village for the Easter period and everyone with a love of Greece should try it at least once. One of the confusing issues surrounding the celebrations is, in fact, the date on which Orthodox Easter is celebrated.

With as many as five weeks between the Easter celebrations in Catholic & Protestant churches and those of the Orthodox faith, it  

is difficult to understand this disparity when one realises that both churches calculate the date of Easter as the first Sunday following the first full

moon after the vernal equinox.

So why the difference? - well it’s down to two things. In the 16th century, the Catholic Church switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian one and, in addition, the two churches use different methods for calculating the vernal equinox. The Western church fixes the date of the equinox at March 21st and then applies ecclesiastical calculations whereas the Orthodox Church uses astronomical observations based on the meridian along which Jerusalem is found.

So, there you have it, after 2000 years, we can’t agree on the same date. The focus of the celebrations however is very much the same and Greeks consider it to be the most important religious festival of the year.

Don’t miss it!

“Easter spells out beauty,
the rare beauty
of new life.”

by S.D.Gordon