Pascha

Happy Easter! Yes, really.

Happy Easter, friends! Yes, really. Today is Orthodox Easter, or ‘Greek Easter’ as we’ve always referred to it. The other one’s called (you guessed it) ‘English Easter’. Back in the motherland, my non-God-fearing fearing family and I would throw ourselves into the seasonal traditions…

We’d watch Jesus of Nazareth on TV and remark on Robert Powell’s beautiful eyes. I started to question the faith my grandma, and motherland, had taught me.

We’d visit seven churches on Good Friday, whose altars would be decorated with elaborate floral displays around an icon of the dead Jesus. We would lower our heads towards the icon but, unlike the rest of the crowd, never touch our lips to it.

We’d attend that evening’s candlelit procession, in which said icon is carried from the church to outside and, depending on the parish, even around the neighbourhood. I found the solemnity calming.

On Saturday night, we’d stand outside our nearest church, holding candles, as the priest ululated from within the building, and watch as boys threw more wood onto the pile for the bonfire. Then, towards midnight, we’d pass the ‘holy light’ to each other, candle to candle, stranger to stranger, until everyone held a small flame. At midnight, He was risen, and the chanting would kick up a gear, the black sky would burst with the colour of firecrackers, the bonfire would rage at Judas, and kids would throw firecrackers or make figures of eight in the air with their sparklers.

There is no bunny in the Orthodox world. We make do with an enormous feast of spit-roasted lamb, potatoes, salad, all our usual dips, bread, and dyed eggs, each of us cracking one against our neighbour’s until one powerful, unbroken egg remained at the table. We’d also gorge on flaouna, a Cypriot tradition. One year, my mum and auntie made 33 of them — my aunt noting that the number was auspicious: the age Jesus was when he died.

I loved, and love, Easter in Cyprus. It taught me that I don’t need to believe in what’s behind the traditions of a season; there’s magic in the ritual itself.