Family

easter times

April 1, 2018 by Settayah No Comments
I love decorations. All of them, at anytime. Because the more harmony and beauty people create around themselves, the happier their life becomes. Around major festivities like Christmas or Easter for example, I go literally crazy. I unbox tens of boxes (to the horror of everyone at home), I start buying hundreds of unnecessary items and initiate a lengthy messy decoration process.

The situation gets so decorative at some point that there is not a square metre free to set foot, without stepping on a plastic egg or a tiny Christmas deer. Of course, none of this is an end in itself. It is my rite at the altar of beauty. Being a celebrant of aesthetics, this is my offering to the sacred order and my humble try to oppose the chaos.

Philosophy aside, decorations are also a sign of respect to the holiday and the idea it symbolises. Easter for example celebrates all things noble and kind so it needs to be spent with loving people in enjoyable surroundings. Easter is about the new dawn that comes after the darkest night hours; about the enlightenment that arises from ignorance. This principle of miraculous resurrection is what we love to celebrate.

easter deco

There is the beautiful Orthodox tradition of dyeing eggs, imprinted in my early childhood memories. The ritual is wide-spread across Eastern Europe and roots deeply in the past. Archaeologists have found red eggs in graveyards from as early as the 12th century but the tradition had certainly emerged much earlier and was modified over the centuries according to the religious rules. The egg is an ancient symbol of new life in our Slavic culture and was an important part of many pagan festivals celebrating spring.

According to a legend, when Christ resurrected from his tomb, a Maria Magdalena ran to the village to spread a word about the wonder. The people wouldn't believe her of course, so she took an egg from the basket she was carrying and cried out loud: 'Let this egg turn red if I am telling the truth! Let it be as red as the blood of our Christ!' And so it happened. The egg turned red to everyone's dismay and from that day on red eggs symbolise the truth, the source and the resurrection of good.
Eggs must be dyed by the eldest woman in the family, either on Easter Thursday or Easter Saturday before sunset. My grandmother would always dye the first Easter egg in red and with it still warm, she would make a little cross on the forehead on each child, foretelling health and luck.

 easter eggs 

I remember the first Easter we spent Down Under, where people do not dye eggs at home. After an intensive search for egg dyes we found out our chances of finding any dye at such a short notice and in the immediate vicinity are not very high. A massive blow to suffer on Easter Saturday of the Holy Week, with a sunset just a couple of hours away. (Being a ritual of light, egg dyeing should not take place after dusk).

easter eggsClose to tears in front of the dyeless market shelves, I was saved by a nice lady with Eastern-European accent. Deciphering my plague, she mentioned something about onion skins and reminded me of an old dyeing method. We momentarily invested in two bags of white onions, several pairs of cheap sheer stockings and a piece of fresh turmeric (nothing beats its yellowness), and here is the rest:

Old school eggs dye

  • Take the largest pot available and fill it with water.
  • Add the skins of at least 10 onions (we mixed white and red), 2 tablespoons vinegar and several slices of fresh turmeric.
  • Lay each egg with a single nice blade of cilantro, mint, rosemary or any garden flower with defined leaves, put it into a sock, squeeze the top tightly and make a knot.
  • Boil for 20 minutes, let them cool, discard the leaves and the socks. Polish with little oil.
  • Enjoy organic healthy Easter eggs, infused with wood nymph’s herbs harvested by full moon light.
Share: