Easter day...
If there is a moment of the year, more than any other, it's hard to be so far away from Crimea... It's on Easter day !... So here is what I wrote about it in 2019...
"... Today is Easter for the Orthodox... And it is, by far, the most important celebration of the year for them... The whole village will have gathered around 4 o'clock in the morning in front of the church, in an orderly line, forming a guard of honor, each person with at their feet a basket, containing "куличи" (plural of "кулич" - pronounced kulitch - traditional Easter cake) in quantity, to offer later to family and loved ones, decorated with candles which give this gathering a little magical air in the night... And also hard-boiled eggs, decorated, of course... And a bottle of wine (кагор* or other Crimean wine, there's plenty to choose from)...
They stay there, with restrained impatience... until the moment when, while the bells are unleashed in a continuous trill, the doors open, and the priest and his acolytes come out of the church to bless the baskets and the people, with generous splashes of holy water... Then, everyone returns to their homes to celebrate with family...
In town it's a little bit different. There are too many people to gather together, so all morning, the operation is repeated, every hour, in the flow of a human tide of people returning to their homes and others arriving, reconstituting a line, right on the sidewalk, as far as needed...
And everyone you meet today will not say "hello", but "Христос воскрес!" (Christ is risen) with a glint in his eyes... To which we must respond "Воистину воскресе!" (really resurrected!)... There is such fervor among these people that even for an old atheist like me the emotion remains palpable, from a distance, confined here in Belgium...
Next year... If God wills... всё будет хорошо! (everything will be fine! - Russian mantra °)."
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(*) Кагор (pronounced "kagor"), wine whose name comes from Cahors in France. First imported by Peter the Great who was a great fan. The Russian clergy, struck by its deep blood-red color, adopted it as a sacramental wine. from 1733. Later, Prince Lev Golitsyn developed his own variation, called кагор, more in accordance with the taste of his compatriots, fortified wine, soft and sweet... The same Prince Golitsyn who imported Dom Pérignon's method to produce, in its Новый Свет (New World) estate, the first Crimean Champagnes, since considered the "kings of Russian wines"...
(°) The advantage of mantras is that they are always true... You just have to repeat them a little longer...
Other Intercultural Notes...
"Si vis pacem..." the article, some kind of manifesto of our association.
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