I’m going to a Greek Orthodox church tonight, then heading to a restaurant for a Greek feast. It should be fun. Is anyone else celebrating?
I just got home from Holy Saturday services… after yesterday’s 8 hours of services, and today’s liturgy with 15 Old Testament readings, I am tired.
Is this your first Orthodox Pascha? Be glad you’re going to a Greek church, they’re more likely to have pews.
Christos voskrese!
On the phone with my dad yesterday, he told me all about the Ukranian dishes my (Ukranian) step-mother was preparing for Orthodox Easter. It makes me all the more homesick!
I married into a family that celebrates the orthodox holidays.
I will never get used to cold kielbasa as a breakfast food 
Happy Easter!!
I won’t be celebrating, but my mum did make me go round after work and take a load of painted eggs.
But anyway…
…Hristos voskrese!
i’m between services as well. a quick nap and then back into the fray. i’m looking forward to the egg, cheese, and bread for breakfast. kielbasa will wait for auntie’s tomorrow.
i can’t handle non-cyrillic slavanic, so …
indeed he is risen!
I guess Greeks don’t take their religion as seriously as some others. I don’t think this service will last more than an hour. Eight hours of services!
My last Greek Easter was in Greece. We stood outside the Church while the old priest chanted something I couldn’t make out and kids set off firecrackers. The firecrackers were really loud and annoying, but I liked the fact that no one seemed to think it was inappropriate.
It didn’t occur to me that this is Ukranian Easter too. I live in a neighborhood with lots of Ukranians.
some people don’t stay for the whole thing.
a simplified version
the midnight service is served between 11:30 and midnight. just before midnight all the lights in the church are put out and at midnight the priest starts the ceremony of the light. then everyone goes outside and there is a procession around the church. christ is risen is proclaimed at the frount door of the church. everyone goes back in to the church, matins starts. at the end of matins a rather large portion of people will leave.
that may be when your hosts will leave. if you stay you have 2 sets of hours and liturgy to go through before you get your blessed egg and pascal food blessed. then some churches will have a meal set out or you sit down at a table and eat out of your own basket. if you stay for the whole thing you may not get out until after dawn.
it sounds like y’all may leave after matins, if they told you only an hour.
looks like it is time for me to get dressed now.
I’d have to say that it probably doesn’t occur to the majority of people that the Orthodox churches follow a different calendar. Oh well. More Christmas, more Easter!
A question from the curious…
I’ve never attended any Othrodox Christian services. How is Orthodox Easter different from the way Easter is celebrated in western Christian services? Is there any difference?
The main difference is that it’s held on a different date. Wasn’t it a fight over the date of Easter the whole reason why the church split in the first place?
I found the service pretty boring. We just stood there while the priest chanted something I couldn’t understand. It was very different from the religious services I’ve attended, but a Western Christian European thought it was pretty similar to a European mass.
It wasn’t the date of Easter that cause the split really. There were doctinal differences over points that seem obscure to many, like the filioque clause in the Creed. More to the point, there were disputes over authority and power. As the Roman Empire broke up the Eastern and Western branches of the church had run ins over who held authority. Can’t really do a full treatment here but it’s easy enough to look up.
As for the date of Easter being different, that stems from the calendar change from Julian to Gregorian. The Eastern church kept to the former, even though in secular life Gregorian was in use. Easter is on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox(unless that’s a Sunday, in which case it’s a week later). So different calendars will place Easter at different times. A lot of the time it’s two weeks apart, as that’s roughly how the dates currently differ. But as it is this year, the Easter formula has the two dates only a week apart.
the date for pascha also depends on passover. pascha can not be celebrated before or during passover. that is why we are a week behind this year. next year all will be on the same day, april 11th.
for interesting music at services you have to go to an oca church or a russian church. most of the major russian composers wrote for the churches. greek church music is based on greek chants that can be fantastic when done well.
in churches that have a slavic beginning (usa, japan, china, canada, some parts of europe, amoung the other traditional slavic places) vedel is usually sung for the canon. it can either be really good or really bad depending on the choir.
as for differences between western services and eastern, there is more going on in an orthodox service, the priest circles the church with incense for most of matins, yelling out : “christ is risen” in many languages, while the congregation and choir (when they get a chance) yell back: “indeed he is risen.” people are greeting each other with the pascal greeting and kiss. candles are being lit. if nothing else by the end of the night you will have the pascal tropar memorized.
well, boring depends on where you are attending the service. Usually you are in a crowd outside the church holding candles and chatting to your friends or doing candlefighting! 5 minutes before midnight you light your candle with the holy light and at midnight all hell breaks loose from the fireworks and the noise! 
If you can’t stand explosions you’d better not go!
in the end you rush home for food! 
i kinda miss this stuff, i spent my easter in england, eating chicken donners or starving and studying about barrell shifters and embedded operating systems 
Thanks, everyone for their replies. I’d heard the reason for the split between East and West was mainly a pissing match between two old men (the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople) on who gets to be called “First Among Equals” or some such. shrug
Rush home for food? Dimosc, do you mean that your parish doesn’t host a party on site immediately after Liturgy?
As for the reasons behind Rome abandoning the Church, it was a very long road of gradual turning away, much of it based on the simple fact that Rome was the only great city of the West, which meant that only Rome had an episcopate of Patriarchical dignity. It got used to being the only big guy on its block. In the East, the Church maintained the older tradition of many Patriarchs, all of them equal and none being more than an honorary “first”.
In addition, there was a fairly complete cultural split between the agrarian, Germano-Latin West and the urban Hellenic East.
Hey, YOU guys left Rome, not hte other way around! LOL
It’s my view that they both sort of split, equally-I think both Rome and Byzantine could lay claim to being the “original” church, but they evolved differently.