Czech Republic > A woman decorates Easter eggs with traditional designs. Easter eggs are famed for their geometrical designs applied with the use of wax.

For many of the area’s Hispanic immigrants, Easter is more than a one-day event or even one Holy Week. In Hispanic cultures, many Christians observe Semana Santa, which is a combination of Holy Week, which runs from Palm Sunday to Easter, and Pascua, which begins on Resurrection Sunday (Easter) and runs through the following Saturday. “It is big, big for us,” said Antonio Garcia, Hispanic Ministries coordinator for the Basilica of St. Lawrence.

For many immigrants, it’s not uncommon for them to reenact the Passion Play, a dramatic recreation of the suffering and death of Christ. The Passion Plays often begin with the Last Supper, proceed through Jesus’ betrayal and judgment, continue through the 12 Stations of the Cross, his crucifixion and, finally, his resurrection. “For us it’s very important to celebrate it because first of all it identifies us as Hispanics,” Garcia said. “Within the Hispanic community there is a lot of devotion and piety. (Reenacting the Passion is) a way not to let (our culture) die off even though we’re in another country.”

While the celebration of Easter centers on the same events, cultures around the world celebrate the death, burial and resurrection in varying ways and even on varying days.

East vs. West
Perhaps the biggest difference between Eastern and Western observations of Easter is the day Easter is celebrated. Western Christians typically celebrate Easter on the day designated by the Gregorian calendar.

Ecclesiastical rules dictate Easter fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which is always March 21. This means Easter for the Western Church, which includes Protestants and Roman Catholics, can never come earlier than March 22 or later than April 25.

Eastern, or Orthodox, Christian churches base the date of Easter on the much older Julian Calendar. The original formula for computing the date of Easter — Pascha as it is known in Orthodox churches — requires the holy day fall after the Jewish observance of Passover, which this year ends April 20.

“The early Christian church had seven councils in order to work on different things that came up during the early parts of Christianity,” said the Rev. Onouphry Keith of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church of Fletcher. “In that seventh council, they made a canon that the calendar was not to be changed. When the Roman Church changed the calendar, they just moved away from the Orthodox Church.”

Western and Eastern Easters can fall as many as 13 days apart but occasionally fall on the same date. Orthodox Easter falls on April 27 this year.

Greece and Russia
Whereas many Western churches celebrate Easter with sunrise services, Eastern, especially Russian, churches traditionally begin their Easter services on Saturday for an all-night Easter vigil. During the service the priest will close the doors to the inner sanctuary to signify that Christ is dead and the way to God is closed, but at midnight the priest throws open the doors and proclaims that Christ is risen.

Another Russian Easter tradition is that of the red Easter eggs. The eggs are dyed red to symbolize the blood of Christ. The eggs are cracked with nails to remind believers of Christ’s death but as the egg whites are exposed they are reminded that the blood of Christ cleansed them of their sins.

In Greece, it’s popular for families to feast on lamb on Easter. Often communities will barbecue lambs together in a public place. The popularity of lamb undoubtedly comes from its association with Christ as the “Lamb of God.”

During the midnight Easter service all the lights in the church are extinguished and the priest emerges from behind a closed door carrying a single lighted candle. He lights the candle of someone in the front row and then the light is passed from candle to candle as each person receives the light of the resurrection. In many places in Greece it is customary to carry the candle back home to mark three crosses above the entrance door in order to bless the occupants with the light of Christ’s resurrection.

The Russian Orthodox Easter exhibition will be on display at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery until April 27. The exhibition is part of the Rituals and Traditions series.

With such a multicultural community, several festivals and holidays are celebrated, but Fairfield City Museum and Gallery is paying tribute to the Russian Orthodox Easter. For some Christians, they may see Christmas as the most important celebration, but for the Russian Orthodox, Easter is the most significant period of the year.

As part of the Rituals and Traditions series, the Russian Orthodox Easter has a dedicated exhibition in the museum. It is the fourth exhibition of the series, with Ramadan, Christmas and Lunar New Year already commemorated. The latest exhibition includes artworks, clothing and intricately patterned Easter eggs, a symbol of birth and resurrection.

Photographs by local photographer Danny Huynh will be on display, illustrating the ritual transition from Great Lent to Holy Week to midnight mass. The exhibition was officially opened by Father Boris, from the Cabramatta Russian Orthodox Church, on March 8. The exhibition is now in its final stages, ending on April 27 at corner of The Horsley Drive and Oxford Street, Smithfield, Australia.

Lamb is the meat most associated with Easter. In the Greek Orthodox religion, lamb certainly plays a central part in proceedings.

After the traditional midnight mass on Holy Saturday, congregations will eat mageiritsa, a soup made from the liver, lungs, heart and intestines of a lamb - with wild greens, herbs and an egg and lemon sauce thrown in for good measure.

Then, on Easter Sunday, they will burn an effigy of Judas on a bonfire and gather to roast a lamb on a spit. The resulting dish is called arni pashalino tis souvlas. The Greeks will also eat tsoureki, a sweet Easter bread baked on Maundy Thursday, braided into long loaves, laced with orange zest and black cumin seeds and then studded with hard-boiled eggs that have been dyed red. The bread’s origins go back to Byzantine times and it has remained more or less unchanged since.

Cyprus conservationists are on the warpath over the felling of protected trees used in bonfires to celebrate the sentencing of Judas Iscariot to eternal damnation as part of Easter celebrations.

Hundreds of trees face the chop for the pyre in an age-old tradition symbolising the burning of Judas, the wayward disciple Christians believe betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Judas is represented by a stuffed dummy on the top of the pile, known in the Cypriot dialect as a “lambrajia”. Bonfires used to be held in church courtyards. But the tradition has evolved into one big all-night rave in some cases replete with barbeques and beer and, if in a residential area, an army of angry neighbours.

“It mostly involves young people, who compete with each other on who will have the bigger bonfire,” said Ioanna Panayiotou, spokeswoman for the Cyprus Greens Party. The party recently got word of eucalyptus trees being felled, and of trees disappearing in a park, she said.

Greek Cypriots, who in their majority are members of the Orthodox Church, celebrate Easter, which is the most important day in their religious calendar, on April 27.

  A look at the symbols of this day, which blends Christian and spring traditions. Perhaps more than any other holiday, Easter is a blend of the Christian and the pagan. As our holiday treat to you, here are some facts and trivia about the annual spring celebration.

Easter and related days
•Easter Sunday is the day Christians celebrate the key event of their faith, the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion.

•Lent is the 40-day period leading up to Easter. For many Christians, it is a time for fasting, reflection and repentance in preparation for Easter Sunday. In most Western church traditions, Lent is actually 46 days long because Sundays aren’t counted.

•Ash Wednesday begins Lent for most Western churches. It takes its name from the practice of public penitents dressing in sackcloth and wearing ashes in the early days of the Christian faith. In some Christian churches, ashes are put on the foreheads of worshippers to remind them to be penitent. Lent in Orthodox churches begins on Clean Monday.

•Holy Week is the week leading up to Easter Sunday. It includes Good Friday, the day Christians remember the Crucifixion of Jesus.

When is Easter?
•Unlike Christmas and Columbus Day, which are fixed on the calendar, the date for Easter floats around a bit. It doesn’t fall on the anniversary of the date it commemorates. Instead, the date of Easter is determined by a formula first set up by the Christian church way back in the 350s. It’s been revised and updated over the centuries as changes have been made to the western calendar system.

In most western churches, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring.

•But it’s not necessarily the full moon, and it isn’t necessarily the first day of spring. The date of the full moon isn’t the night the moon is full in the sky, it’s a date established by astronomers and mathematicians in the 1500s. And the first date of spring isn’t necessarily the astronomical vernal equinox. It, too, is a date fixed in tables.

•And not everybody’s Easter is the same day. The Orthodox Christian Church and some other “Eastern” churches base their celebrations on the Julian Calendar, which predates the Gregorian Calendar established in 1582. Some years, both Easter celebrations fall on the same Sunday, but this year, the Orthodox Easter will be celebrated April 27.

In the basket
•Peeps, those marshmallow treats shaped like baby chicks, were developed in Bethlehem, Pa., in the 1950s by Sam Born, a Russian-born candy maker who came to the United States in 1910. The company he founded, Just Born, produces more than 1.2 billion Peeps a year. During the height of Easter production, the factory pumps out 4.2 million of them a day.

•More than 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies are produced each year. According to a poll, 76 percent of Americans prefer to bite off the ears of the bunny first.

•Jelly beans probably developed from the Middle Eastern fruit candy known as Turkish Delight. They weren’t associated with Easter until the 1930s.

•Each year, manufacturers crank out more than 16 billion jelly beans for Easter.

•Cream-filled eggs have been around since the 1920s, but it wasn’t until 1971 that candy company Cadbury produced its first Cadbury Creme Egg. The company makes 300 million of them each year, but sells them only from New Years to Easter.

Other traditions
•On Easter Sunday in Russia, anyone may enter the belfries of a church and ring the bells.

•In northern England, men prowl the streets on Easter Sunday looking for women to lift three times. In return, they get an kiss or a coin.

•In Bavaria in the 15th century, it became a custom for priests to tell funny stories during Easter Mass. Telling jokes and laughing on Easter became all the rage, until Pope Clement X, thinking the custom unseemly, prohibited it in the 1670s.

•In France and Germany, sports, especially handball, were a part of the Easter tradition. In some cases, servants would play ball against their masters, and even priests and monks would compete.

Eggs, bunnies, baskets and lilies
•The word “Easter” doesn’t have anything to do with the Christian celebration. It is derived from the name of a German deity, Estre or Ostra. She was the goddess of the rising sun and spring, and was celebrated in springtime festivals.

•Eggs, which are laid by birds and from which new birds emerge, were symbols of new life and rebirth long before the Christian era began. In the early days of the church, the consumption of eggs during Lent was prohibited, so decorating them and giving them as gifts on Easter became a way of celebrating the resurrection.

•In some parts of Europe, Easter eggs are a tradtional gift godparents give to their godchildren.

•Like eggs, baby chicks are associated with spring and new life, and therefore were adopted as Easter symbols.

•Children have been gathering on the lawn of the White House to roll Easter Eggs since 1878.

•Rabbits, too, are an ancient pagan symbol. They represent fertility and are associated with the reawakening of the land in springtime. Bunnies were first associated with Easter celebrations in the 1500s, and by the early 1800s, German bakers were selling Easter bunnies made from chocolate and pastry.

•The tradition of the Easter Bunny bringing gifts to children Easter morning is also from Germany, where he was known as Oschter Haws. Initially, the bunny left his treats in a nest made for him by children. Later, the tradition merged with the notion of the Easter basket.

•The tradition of Easter baskets probably dates from the early Christian practice of taking a basket of food, often the foods that were prohibited during Lent, to church for a blessing before the Easter feast.

•The Easter lily, Lilium longiflorium, is said to have grown in the Garden of Gethsemane, where, the Bible says, Jesus prayed before his crucifixion. Because it grows in spring and is white, it symbolizes rebirth and purity.

Although the moon was quite full Thursday night, the actual full “Worm Moon” was Friday, dictating that Easter would fall on Sunday March 25, if you are a Christian who follows the Gregorian calendar. But if you follow the Julian calendar, as Orthodox Christian churches do, Easter won’t arrive this year until April 27.

Having two Easters is not unusual at all but exactly why are there two Easters? Western Christian churches compute the date according to rules established during the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582. The Gregorian calendar, developed under Pope Gregory XIII, is the one now used worldwide for civil purposes. For the Gregorian calendar, Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox (first day of spring).

In 1582, Orthodox churches decided to keep following the Julian calendar, developed by Julius Caesar. From then on, the Julian calendar date of Oct. 4, 1582 was followed by the Gregorian calendar date of Oct. 15, 1582. The 10 dates of October 5 to 14 were removed. Consequently, Orthodox Easter Sunday dates are identical with Western dates up to 1582, then from 1583 onwards often differ from those of Western churches.

Orthodox churches celebrate Easter always on the basis of the Julian calendar and the “19 PFM dates” table. The PFM stands for “Paschal Full Moon,” another name for the Worm Moon. In some years, the Orthodox Easter Sunday occurs on the same day as the Western Easter Sunday. For example, this occurred in 1990 because the Western Easter Sunday date of (Gregorian calendar) April 15, 1990 is the same as the Orthodox Easter Sunday date of (Julian calendar) April 2, 1990. In most years, Orthodox Easter follows Western Easter by one or more weeks. To determine the Orthodox Easter Sunday date, take the date of the Gregorian Easter Sunday, then add the number of days which have been “skipped” in the Gregorian calendar.

Easter is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion, about 33 A.D.

Many non-religious cultural elements have become part of the holiday, like hiding Easter baskets and getting chocolate Easter candy, and even the Easter Bunny himself. But the chocolate aside, eggs and the bunny are also symbols of fertility, symbols of the first day of spring and the planting of the new crops by the farmers.