Easter traditions in Romania include: - A 40 day fasting period before Easter followed by special preparations for Holy Week, including making painted Easter eggs and pasca bread. - The Easter meal contains foods like lamb, cheese, vegetables and pasca cake filled with cheese, eggs and raisins. - Beautiful painted Easter eggs called "ouă încondeiate" are made in the Bucovina region using beeswax to draw patterns on eggshells with the background egg color left visible.

1. SCHOOL NO. 2 MARGINEA
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The most successful way of learning through sport, art, dance, music and foreign
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ROMANIA
APRIL 2019

2. Easter Traditions
• Easter is for Christians the most important
celebration. In Romanian language the name
‘Paște’ comes from the Hebrew ‘Pessah’, just
like in the other Romance languages.
• The preparations for this holiday start 40 days
before with the fasting period and end with
the special week called the Holy Week.

4. • Most of the traditions
are connected to the
Holy Week, people go to
church, prepare the
traditional Easter eggs,
the special bread which
is made only for Easter
– pasca.

5. • The Easter meal contains red eggs, lamb,
cheese, lots of vegetables, and the traditional
Romanian cake of this celebration – “pasca” –
which is a type of sponge cake filled with
cheese, eggs and raisins.

6. • The tradition says that the eggs must be
painted on Thursday and the color must be
red, however nowadays eggs can be painted in
a variety of colors.

7. • The most beautiful Easter eggs are made in a magical
region of Romania called Bucovina. The eggs made
here are called “ouă încondeiate” (painted eggs).
After painting the egg, the technique is to keep the
background color of the egg and draw beautiful
patterns on the eggshell with melted beeswax.

9. • This type of eggs usually have patterns that
can also be found on the traditional clothes or
ceramics.
• The Holy Cross can usually be drawn among
vines, flowers or geometrical structures.

10. • The Resurrection itself is celebrated on the
night before the Easter Day. Then people go to
church to light the candle and bring the
resurrection light into their homes. On their
way back, people would share the holy light
with others.
• In our region, people also go to the cemetery
with the light, to let their ancerstors know that
Jesus has risen.

12. • The belief is that each church gets light from
God, with the main source being the holy fire
in Jerusalem. This is a miracle which happens
each year on resurrection
• The holy fire is then spread throughout the
world. The Romanian Orthodox Church has
been bringing the holy fire to Romania too in
the last couple of years.

13. • At the end of the Holy
Liturgy the priests bless
the food brought at
church, in baskets.
Usually there is meat,
red eggs, vegetables,
cheese and nowadays
chocolate bunnies.