Serbia Gets Ready for Easter

When she was growing up, Vesna Nenadovic generally saw religious holidays as an unwelcome disruption to the most cherished of childhood routines - playtime.

But Easter was the exception. Now as a married mother, Vesna is teaching Serbian holiday traditions to her young daughter. “Easter was one of the holidays I loved. It’s the same for my daughter now,” she said.

Priest Miroslav Stikic said most Serbs found a way of celebrating Easter even during the official atheism of the Communist era.
“This is the only holiday that Communists didn’t change in any way,” he said. According to Stikic, urban Serbs often marked Easter in the countryside, where the Communist authorities found it harder to suppress religious traditions.

Central to the Serbian celebration of Easter is the egg, the seasonal symbol of new life. While the Communist authorities managed to replace the traditional Serb Christmas tree – the plain “badnjak” – with the type more common in the West, Stikic said they could not replace the Easter egg.

Easter eggs in Western Europe can be made of chocolate and sold in supermarkets. However, Serbs use ordinary chicken eggs at Easter, boiling scores of them at home on Good Friday.

While the Easter weekend is the climax of the celebration, for many Serbs the festivities start in earnest on Lazar’s Saturday, April 16th. On that day, church floors are covered for the afternoon mass with the flower known as vrbica, or in English,  purple loosestrife.

During the ceremony, the priest blesses the flowers and shares them with believers.

”This day marks Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem,” says Stikic. “Vrbica is a Serbian version of the palm fronds that children laid down on Jesus’ path.”

Believers also make wreaths out of vrbica flowers and place them on their front doors, while children wear little bells around their necks as a symbol of Jesus’ coming.

Vesna said she intends to spend Good Friday with her daughter, decorating Easter eggs by dyeing them.

As in previous years, she intends to follow the tradition of dyeing the first set of eggs in red and setting one of them aside until next Easter. “That egg is called the housekeeper,” Vesna says, referring to the belief that the egg will help protect the home.
Although coloured dyes for the eggs can be bought in the market, most people still dye at least 10 eggs by boiling them with an onion.

“The onion gives the eggs a nice caramel colour,” said Vesna. “And if you want to create a pattern on the egg, just draw on it with wax before boiling.”

Although Easter bunnies are becoming more popular, the animal that truly symbolises Easter for Serbs is the baby chick – the natural product of the egg. Young children often play with stuffed toys of chicks.

After colouring Easter eggs, families traditionally spend the afternoon at mass. The Good Friday Mass is performed in front of a replica of Jesus’ shroud, symbolising the removal the body from the cross. In some churches, believers pass under the shroud after the ceremony and make a wish.

Saturday is reserved for decorating homes. Easter Sunday starts with bells ringing in churches throughout the country.
In the Orthodox tradition, some believers give up certain foods during the 40 days up to the Easter, making Easter Sunday a much-awaited feast.

After morning mass, families have breakfast together and play the game of ‘tucanje’, which involves cracking eggs against each other to see which one breaks first.

Most Serbs spend Easter visiting friends and family. The phrase exchanged most commonly in greeting is “Hristos Vaskrse”, meaning, “Christ is Risen”.

It is standard practice to exchange coloured eggs between hosts and guests.

Working hours during Easter

Government Offices: As Easter and International Labour Day (May 1st) are both national holidays, government offices will be closed from April 22nd to 25th and from May 1st to 3rd. Hospitals will work as usual.

Shops: Most shops, including Delta Maxi, Tempo, Usce Shopping Centre and Delta city, will be open on Good Friday, April 22nd, until 6pm, but will be closed on Easter Sunday. Most shops will operate under reduced opening hours on May 1st and 2nd.