“This is the day which the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice therein.”
(Prokimen of the Resurrection)
The feast of the Resurrection of Christ is rich not only in majestic church services, melodies, song and deeply symbolic rites, but also in very beautiful ecclesiastical-liturgical and folk customs. Some of these customs are specifically Christian while others trace their origin to the pre-Christian festival which greeted the arrival of spring and the vernal sun. Christianity sanctified many of these ancient customs by investing them with a Christian meaning and symbolism thereby transforming them into Christian practices.
Professor Stephen Kylymnyk, describing Easter night and speaking of the customs of Easter remarked: “If modern man were able for a moment to look into the pure soul of a child and experience that joy, that boundless joy a child experiences as though it were in the land of make-believe, when it anticipates the morrow of Easter then he would under- stand and feel that invisible one thousand-year-old tie, that union of his soul with the souls of the ancient ancestors, that union of modern Christian culture with the thousand-year-old highly-developed culture of our ancestors… he would then cherish these customs, these traditions of the Ukrainian people as something sacred and sublime; he would guard them, preserve them, cling to them as to a precious treasure to be transmitted from generation to generation. (The Ukrainian Folk Year from the Historical Pespective, Vol. III, p. 82)
Here we would like to point out, first of all, the more important liturgical characteristics of the feast of the Pasch (Easter), as well as some of the national (folk) customs associated with Easter.
Liturgical Characteristics
The resurrection of Jesus Christ took place very early in the morning on the Sunday the third day after His death. Hence, there came into existence the ancient custom of ending the paschal fast on Saturday night, beginning the resurrection (Easter) celebrations at midnight, immediately after midnight, or at dawn. Since no uniform practice existed in all the Churches, the Sixth Ecumenical Council (691) established the following rule: “The faithful, celebrating the days of the saving passion, with fasting and prayer and contrition, must cease their fast about the middle hours of the night after Great Saturday, the divine Evangelists Matthew and Luke having first indicated to us the lateness of the night, the one by adding the words ‘after the evening of Saturday’ (Matthew 28,1) and the other by saying, ‘very early in the morning.”. (Luke 24,1) (Canon 89)
The resurrectional celebrations begin with a procession around the church, accompanied by the ringing of the church bells. This procession is the symbol of the myrrh-bearing women who, early Sunday morning, went to the grave of the Lord.
The Typicon of Father Isidore Dolnytsky notes that the shroud must not be carried in the procession because this practice was banned by Cardinal Sembratovych as incompati- ble with the joy of the Resurrection. Instead, an icon depicting the Resurrection must be carried in the procession. Other typicons mention that the Holy Gospel, the icon of the Mother of God and other icons may be used. In regard to carrying the Blessed Sacrament in procession, Father I. Dolnytsky says that our typicons do not mention it and that neither the Greeks nor the Latins have this custom, only local Latin churches, specifically, the Polish churches employ this practice. Just as on Great Friday the symbol of Christ is the shroud, so on Easter the symbol of Christ is the icon of the Resurrection, hence, no need exists for the Blessed Sacrament to be exposed.
After the procession, the Matins of the Resurrection begins before the closed doors of the church, as though before the sealed tomb of our Lord. Here for the first time we hear the joyful hymn: “Christ is risen from the dead…” As the hymn is being sung, the priest opens the doors of the church with the cross, as a sign that Christ’s death opened the gates of heaven.
Our earliest typicons prescribe at the end of the Matins of the Resurrection, during the singing of the sticheras of the Pasch, that at the words “and let us embrace one another” the faithful kiss one another. The rite of mutual kissing is called “Chrystosuvannya” i.e., “Christing” and, at this time, the faithful greet each other with the words, “Christ is risen!” The Typicon of Father I. Dolnytsky says that there is no such custom in our Church of kissing one another, but that the faithful merely came up to the priest and kiss the cross, the Holy Gospel Book, the Artos with the icon of the Resurrection of our Lord tied to the top of it and other icons, and greet one another with the words: “Christ is risen!” while those greeted respond, “Indeed He is risen!”
The Easter salutation “Christ is risen” was spoken for the first time by the angel to the women at the Lord’s tomb. This joyful greeting has already, for hundreds and hundreds of years, echoed among our people throughout the entire Paschal season. By this salutation we express the joy of Easter (the Resurrection) and profess our faith both in Christ’s resur- rection and our own.
On the day of the Resurrection the Divine Liturgy is carried out with great solemnity. The Easter Gospel speaks of the divinity of Jesus Christ, because His resurrection is the supreme proof of His divinity. If many priests are con- celebrating, then the Gospel is read in several languages, customarily in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, for these are the languages used for the inscription on the cross of Christ. The Gospel is also read in the language or languages of the faithful. The reading of the Gospel in different languages signified that the doctrine of Christ is proclaimed in all languages and to all peoples. After each sentence of the Gospel, the church bells are rung, to symbolize that the good news of Christ is being proclaimed to all creatures.
During the entire Bright Week the royal or holy doors of the iconostas remain open as a sign that Christ opened to us the doors of the Kingdom of God, as we sing in the paschal canon “You have opened to us the gates of Paradise…” (Ode 6)
On the day of the Resurrection during the Divine Liturgy after the Prayer behind the Ambo, the blessing of the Artos takes place. Artos is a Greek word which means “bread”. It is the symbol of the bread of everlasting life our Lord Jesus Christ. The Artos is a bread on the top of which an icon is tied representing Christ coming forth in glory with a flag of victory in his hand, from the grave. The Artos is placed on the tetrapod for the people to kiss as a reminder of Christ’s presence among them, or it is placed on the altar and remains there throughout the entire Bright Week until Bright Saturday when it is cut up into pieces and distributed to the faithful on the Sunday of St. Thomas.
During the season of the Pentecost, which extends from the Pasch (Easter) to the Descent of the Holy Spirit, as a sign of the joy of the Resurrection we do not make any bows, nor do we kneel. The Council of Nicea (325) gave us the following rule regarding this matter: “Since there are some who kneel on the day of the Lord and during the season of the Pentecost, for the sake of uniformity in all eparchies, the Council decrees that during that time prayers be offered up to God while standing.” (Canon 20) A similar decree was issued by the Sixth Ecumenical Council in the 90th rule.
During the day of the Resurrection, and in some places even throughout the whole Bright Week, church bells are rung all day long as a sign of Christ’s victory over death and Hades.
National Folk Customs
A very common and cherished custom among our people the blessing of food and pastry on the day of the Resurrection. After the long fast, holy Church permits the faithful to eat any kind of food so that during the Easter season they may experience together with spiritual joy, the joy derived from the gifts of the earth. For this reason she blesses these gifts and dispenses from fasting during the entire Bright Week. After the Divine Liturgy, the paschal food is solemnly blessed outside the Church.
Shells from blessed eggs, crumbs and bones were not thrown out, but were buried either in the garden, or in the field, so that the earth, too, might receive some blessed mat- ter. In certain localities in Galicia shells from the blessed eggs. were thrown on the roof tops of the house.
Closely associated with the blessing of the Easter bread or as we say in Ukrainian “pascha” are our famous colored Easter-eggs. Their origin is very ancient. Among the ancient peoples a custom prevailed which required that one did not appear before a great personage for the first time without presenting a gift. A pious tradition relates that Mary Magdalene, when preaching the Gospel, first appeared in the court of Emperor Tiberius, she presented him with an egg painted red, saying: “Christ is risen,” and with that greeting she began her sermon. Other Christians, following her exam- ple also began to present one another with a colored egg on the day of the Resurrection (Easter).
The main reason that the egg plays such a role in Easter customs is that it is regarded as a symbol of Christ’s resurrection. Just as from the dead shell of the egg a new life emerges so too Christ came forth from the grave to a new life. The red painted egg is the symbol of our salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. Closely connected with the colored Easter-eggs are the various games in which both children and adults participate on the day of the Resurrection.
A special expression of the joy of the Resurrection in the villages of Ukraine were the secular spring songs and the various games which took place in the area near the church. “It is strange,” says Professor S. Kylymnyk, “that the spring songs composed by our ancient ancestors already in the fourth-sixth centuries (perhaps even earlier) during the time of the State of the Antae, have come down to us through the obscurity of thousands of years, and centuries of great calamities, wars, invasions, and subjugation and have retained their predominant thought, main idea and content with only the change of words from ancient to modern. The spring songs are a priceless treasure of the early culture of our ancient ancestors. They are highly artistic and even unparalleled works of poetry, historical documents that speak to us of the life, ideals, psychology, faith and belief, understanding of nature, and the longing of our ancestors to understand natural phenomena.” (Opus cit., pp. 106-107)
In certain localities of Ukraine it was customary on the day of Resurrection for families to visit the graves of their beloved dead, in order to share with them the joy of the Resurrection and to salute them with the greeting of the Resurrection. At the Kievan Pecherska Lavra following the resurrection services, the monks and the faithful descended into the underground caves in order to announce to the deceased monks the news of Christ’s resurrection.
In ancient times, a custom prevailed of building fires on Easter night to greet spring and the vernal sun. These fires, in Christian religion, came to symbolize those fires which the soldiers, guarding the grave of Christ, kindled during the night, and they symbolize our greeting of the Sun of Truth – the Risen Christ.
From the very rich treasure of our religious and cultural traditions we have described only a few, but even these clearly express the deep faith, strong traditions, high culture and noble spirit of our Ukrainian people, as well as their deep love for their own rite. “The wealth and great value of the ritual customs of our folklore,” says Professor S. Kylymnyk, “is immense. The most cultured nations of the world could envy us. These treasures of the high culture of our past – mirror our national spirit and are veritable witnesses to the eternal longing of our people for freedom, perfection, beauty and the sun.” (op. cit., p. 97)
