Greek Easter + Social Interaction Report
Apr. 23rd, 2006 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Since I've gained a few friends in the last year, I'll explain what Greek Easter's like for anyone curious in what different cultures do. Or at least my family, but I've heard from others that it's common.
I come from a mixed family, and greek easter and regular easter rarely coincided (dates chosen based on a different calender), so we usually celebrated both. Not to knock regular Easter, but Greek Easter is better. First, there really isn't that whole candy junk associated with it. Heck for dessert today we had watermelon.
But the food is much much better. The traditional greek easter dinner is potatoes, rice, peppers, salad, various other vegetables, bread, hot sausage, and the main course, roast lamb. Ideally and traditionally, the lamb is roasted on a spit rotated over a low fire and turned by male relatives who are liberally supplied with alcohol to keep them interested in the job. This time around since it was a smaller gathering (as I said in another entry, my family's gotten a bit dysfunctional in the last year with aunts refusing to speak or even associate with each other... we didn't even think we were doing anything at all until my Baba (grandmother) called yesterday and invited us, my dad and his wife, and one of my aunts, and one of my cousins and her family to dinner at her house), so the lamb was roast in the oven (it was also a really rainy day). Now I can't have lamb too often or I get sick of it, but once a year it is the best meat in the world, at treat to look forward to.
About the only thing we were really missing this year was feta cheese.. don't have it often enough and this time around there was none, but ah well.
The other little tradition associated with easter is eggs. Yeah, we do painted hardboiled eggs too, but they're typically only solid colur and using a few colors (usually red or blue at least in my family, sometimes green and yellow ones get into the mix too). The tradition is everyone gets an egg, and then you have egg competitions, where you have someone hold their egg pointy-end up, and you strike it with your pointy end (traditionally saying 'Christos Anesti (sp)', which translates as 'Christ has risen'). Whoever's doesn't break is the 'winner'. Then you flip it around, and you hold the round egg and they strike yours with their round end (saying 'Alethos Anesti (sp)', which means 'Yes he is risen' - to me the words are just part of the tradition of course). If your egg is broken, you're supposed to eat your egg. Things were a little thrown together so we just got our eggs to take home of course and didn't really engage in the tradition this year.
Of course the other unspoken tradition is everyone getting into a heated (and possibly Ouzo-fueled) discussion. That didn't happen this time aside from a loud but relatively peaceful discussion of what to do if there comes a point that Baba can't live in her house alone anymore or dies. Nobody really expects it anytime soon, she's 81 and strong as an ox, but she was the one who wanted to discuss it, but everyone agreed that no, she'd never have to live in an old age home and there were plenty of people willing to take her in if it came to that.
It was nice though. Hadn't seen that particular cousin in quite a while. Her 5-year old daughter was there and seemed to gravitate towards me a bit... dunno why that is, kids seem to do that. I must give off a kid-friendly vibe or something.
And now, the 6 Social Interaction Report.. So this week at work spoke a bit to sunday-morning-girl again. She noticed my haircut, which is always nice. Didn't say one way or the other whether it looked good, just launched into a 'see, girls notice these things, guys never notice anything' comment. Anyway, had another reasonably pleasant conversation (which also led to her asking my opinion on why guys are such idiots, with attached story about some guy she knows), although I didn't manage to use any of my potential talking points even when conversation lulled, just waited for her to say something again. Then of course other people started coming in and I was mostly left out except for a bit when somebody thought I was somebody else by the back of my head for a second, and I learned I'm apparently very different from whoever this person is. I assume that means he's a talker. Then people moved in and out and had another reasonably pleasant conversation (again, her-directed) with new-girl who's only been working there a month or so (talked to her a few weeks back). All in all okay but of course as usual failure on actually starting any conversation on its own rather than just naturally continuing what's there.
I come from a mixed family, and greek easter and regular easter rarely coincided (dates chosen based on a different calender), so we usually celebrated both. Not to knock regular Easter, but Greek Easter is better. First, there really isn't that whole candy junk associated with it. Heck for dessert today we had watermelon.
But the food is much much better. The traditional greek easter dinner is potatoes, rice, peppers, salad, various other vegetables, bread, hot sausage, and the main course, roast lamb. Ideally and traditionally, the lamb is roasted on a spit rotated over a low fire and turned by male relatives who are liberally supplied with alcohol to keep them interested in the job. This time around since it was a smaller gathering (as I said in another entry, my family's gotten a bit dysfunctional in the last year with aunts refusing to speak or even associate with each other... we didn't even think we were doing anything at all until my Baba (grandmother) called yesterday and invited us, my dad and his wife, and one of my aunts, and one of my cousins and her family to dinner at her house), so the lamb was roast in the oven (it was also a really rainy day). Now I can't have lamb too often or I get sick of it, but once a year it is the best meat in the world, at treat to look forward to.
About the only thing we were really missing this year was feta cheese.. don't have it often enough and this time around there was none, but ah well.
The other little tradition associated with easter is eggs. Yeah, we do painted hardboiled eggs too, but they're typically only solid colur and using a few colors (usually red or blue at least in my family, sometimes green and yellow ones get into the mix too). The tradition is everyone gets an egg, and then you have egg competitions, where you have someone hold their egg pointy-end up, and you strike it with your pointy end (traditionally saying 'Christos Anesti (sp)', which translates as 'Christ has risen'). Whoever's doesn't break is the 'winner'. Then you flip it around, and you hold the round egg and they strike yours with their round end (saying 'Alethos Anesti (sp)', which means 'Yes he is risen' - to me the words are just part of the tradition of course). If your egg is broken, you're supposed to eat your egg. Things were a little thrown together so we just got our eggs to take home of course and didn't really engage in the tradition this year.
Of course the other unspoken tradition is everyone getting into a heated (and possibly Ouzo-fueled) discussion. That didn't happen this time aside from a loud but relatively peaceful discussion of what to do if there comes a point that Baba can't live in her house alone anymore or dies. Nobody really expects it anytime soon, she's 81 and strong as an ox, but she was the one who wanted to discuss it, but everyone agreed that no, she'd never have to live in an old age home and there were plenty of people willing to take her in if it came to that.
It was nice though. Hadn't seen that particular cousin in quite a while. Her 5-year old daughter was there and seemed to gravitate towards me a bit... dunno why that is, kids seem to do that. I must give off a kid-friendly vibe or something.
And now, the 6 Social Interaction Report.. So this week at work spoke a bit to sunday-morning-girl again. She noticed my haircut, which is always nice. Didn't say one way or the other whether it looked good, just launched into a 'see, girls notice these things, guys never notice anything' comment. Anyway, had another reasonably pleasant conversation (which also led to her asking my opinion on why guys are such idiots, with attached story about some guy she knows), although I didn't manage to use any of my potential talking points even when conversation lulled, just waited for her to say something again. Then of course other people started coming in and I was mostly left out except for a bit when somebody thought I was somebody else by the back of my head for a second, and I learned I'm apparently very different from whoever this person is. I assume that means he's a talker. Then people moved in and out and had another reasonably pleasant conversation (again, her-directed) with new-girl who's only been working there a month or so (talked to her a few weeks back). All in all okay but of course as usual failure on actually starting any conversation on its own rather than just naturally continuing what's there.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:14 pm (UTC)But I like candy :)
I don't celebrate any Easter, so I'm not championing the Western version or anything...I just like buying discounted candy the day after ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 03:30 pm (UTC)I also poorly worded my post.. I didn't specifically mean to imply that Greek Easter was better because there isn't the candy associated with it, I just meant Greek Easter is better, and then launched into my discussion of how it's different, of which the first thing that came to mind was that there isn't the whole association with candy. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-23 05:00 pm (UTC)I was raised Christian but don't believe in it, though my parents and such are, so it's just one of those things I ignore and celebrate as an ultimately meaningless, though fun, tradition that's an excuse for a big meal. :)