A Georgian Easter

The dominant religion in Georgia is Orthodox Christianity. They are heavy on ritual and icons and prayer. Our house even has a small shrine area. Behold:




I read somewhere that in Georgia, Easter is an even bigger holiday than Christmas.
Though skeptical at first, after experiencing it myself, I would probably agree. The orthodox church here requires them to give up meat and dairy for Lent, and the stores and markets have been full of eggs, the red roots they use to dye them, and the special easter cake called Paskha.

Last Sunday was palm Sunday, and just about everyone we saw was carrying some branches...apparently the orthodox priests bless the branches every year, and people take them home and keep them for an entire year somewhere in the house, then replace them with new ones the next Palm Sunday. I went home, looked at our shrine, and sure enough, we have some tucked in the corner.



This week, people were given not only Good Friday off from work but the thursday before...Good Friday Eve? And they have Monday off too. Try pulling that in the states. We went to the market on Thursday, since Paul was off work, and it was totally crazy, full of people getting ready for the big weekend. On Good Friday, the streets were empty. On saturday I went out to a big market outside the city, and probably only 1/4 of the vendors were there. I found some great deals nonetheless, some of which you will see in later posts.

Today at church, everyone greeted each other by saying, Christos voskres! Which is, Christ is risen! People gave the boys red eggs with religious scenes on them. I loved this! and much prefer it to random bunnies and chicks that, although cute, really have nothing to do with Christ.

We had a special little social afterward with the paskha bread, red eggs, and other treats. Another tradition is everyone gets an egg, and you take your egg and hit someone else's egg. If your egg cracks, you lose and have to give your egg to the winner. So eventually one kid with the best egg ends up with all the eggs. Guess who won...


That is the king of all the eggs right there! Luke was so excited that his egg was awesome. We also organized a little egg hunt for the kids inside the church building and hid tons of eggs and candy in the upstairs rooms (our church had like 4 levels) while they were down below. They had so much fun doing it. It was the first sort of "ward activity" that we've had here, and it really felt like a cohesive group of people for the first time.

Then, after church, we had the other americans in our branch over for dinner: Marisa, our closest church member neighbor and my weekend shopping buddy, and the Day family. They just got here, and this was their first Sunday at church in Georgia. They have 3 kids ages 12, 11, and 8. Our kids had so much fun playing with the first friends they've had in over a month! I am sure you will here more about them in future posts.

Somehow the planets aligned and i was able to pull off a dinner for 10 people. We may have been eating off mismatched china with a few plastic forks and cups thrown in, but the fish was so yummy, the rolls rose, and i didn't burn anything in my crazy unpredictable oven. The kids all even ate their fish. And liked it. Want the recipe??? It's Rachel's tarragon tilapia: white fish, butter, garlic, tarragon, salt. Bake in foil. The end. Fabulous. We get fresh tarragon here, and it is seriously amazing.




Marisa brought chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting that were seriously the best thing I have tasted in a while...Duncan Hines stuff she brought with her from America. Soooooo good!!!



We had such a pleasant evening. The boys of course had way too much sugar--here is Liam demonstrating the proper way to eat a butterfinger.







Mmmm hmmmm. He ate all the chocolate off first. Silly boy.


The kids were a disaster at bedtime, in fact they are still popping out of bed at 11 pm and i am about to duct tape them in...but all in all it was a great day. And honestly it was the most Christ-centered Easter week I have ever had. Thank you, Georgia, for showing us your faith.



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Location:Tbilisi, Georgia