Greece Celebrates Resurrection of Christ: Christos Anesti!

The moment of singing ‘Christos Anesti’ at midnight on Saturday to Sunday. Credit: Georgios Liakopoulos,  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 /Wikipedia

Greece celebrated on Holy Saturday night the Resurrection of Christ at local churches throughout the country.

In a service that started late in the evening, candle-holding crowds gather outside the church. During the liturgy, a few minutes before midnight, all the lights are turned off and the priest exits the altar holding candles lit by the Holy Fire, which arrived only a few hours earlier from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The Holy Fire is then shared with all the people inside and outside the church.

At midnight the priest announces that Christ Has Risen (“Christos Anesti”) in a mystical chant.

Christ is risen from the dead,by death trampling death,and to those in the tombsgranting life!

The feeling of anticipation and adoration intensified throughout the crowd, as smiling faces were illuminated by the ritual of lambada candles being lit with the holy light from person to person.

“Christos Anesti” was followed by the light and the sound of fireworks being set off.

Egg cracking and magiritsa in Greece after Resurrection Liturgy

Then at dinner tables, egg cracking, or tsougrisma (τσούγκρισμα in Greek), started.

The red-dyed eggs are tapped against each other and cracked together between two people as they exchange the traditional Easter greeting “Christos anesti!” (“Christ has risen”) – “Alithos anesti!” (“He Truly Has”).

Greeks have been cracking red eggs at Easter for many centuries. The tradition, although it is also a fun game, is of course steeped in religious symbolism as well.

The egg in itself is a symbol, as its hard shell represents the sealed tomb of Jesus — the cracking of which symbolizes His resurrection from the dead and exit from the tomb.

This was followed by the traditional Easter soup “magiritsa”,  a Greek soup made from lamb offal. Greek-Americans and Greek-Canadians sometimes call it “Easter soup”, “Easter Sunday soup”, or “Easter lamb soup”.

Magiritsa which breaks the 40-day Great Lent period is considered to be the best meal to gradually ease your digestive system back into its regular eating habits after the fasting period.

In some parts of Greece, most notably Thessaly, it is not served as soup but rather as a fricassee, where it contains only offal and a large variety of vegetables, but no onions or rice, as in the soup.