We don't always celebrate Easter the same day as everyone else. This year, while many people are having Easter egg hunts and eating chocolate bunnies, we Orthodox are celebrating Palm Sunday. My sons were born in Greece and I have always tried to keep up the Greek traditions for them. You might say that when in Rome, etc., but I have been Orthodox for more than 50 years and anyway am used to being different and not fitting in.
The main reason that Greek (and Russian, Serbian, etc.) Orthodox Easter sometimes falls on a different Sunday from Western Easter is that it must come after the Jewish Passover,which began last Wednesday and lasts for seven or eight days. The rest of the calculations for Easter, involving lunar calendars and something called a golden number, are really beyond me.
Added to this complicated business is the fact that many Orthodox did not accept the Gregorian calendar when it was introduced in 1582 (there is a reason for the word Orthodox) and still use the Julian or "old" calendar, which is 13 days behind. All Orthodox churches, however, celebrate Easter on the same day.
So on Saturday, Eastern Orthodox people will go to church around midnight and wait silently for the priest to bring out the candle which represents the new light and to announce "Christos Anesti" or whatever the word is in the local language. The Russian is something like "Christos Vaskreshi". The flame passes from candle to candle until every taper is lit, and the people try to keep the flame going until they get home, when they will smoke a cross over the doorsill and light the lamp in front of their own icon stands.
Our church stands on a hill in San Francisco. When the Easter service is over, you can wait at the bottom of the hill and watch a candlelit procession as some 700 smiling, sleepy people guard their little flames on the way to their cars. Driving home, usually at about two in the morning, you can sometimes see another small flame dimly illuminating a nearby car.
(Giotto, Palm Sunday)
