Same celebration, different cultures
This year I was invited by a dear
friend of mine to do something special. On Sunday 12th took place
the Eastern Orthodox Easter which is celebrated one week after the Catholic
Easter. Like the Catholic holiday it is also a Christian festival marking the
resurrection of Jesus. I won’t go any further into the religious aspects because I’m not a religious person. But I do enjoy keeping traditions that were
taught by my Brazilian family.
Although keeping traditions is great,
learning something new is amazing. So I was thrilled to get this invitation for
lunch to celebrate their Easter. One of the new things I learned was coloring
eggs, a practice that wasn’t common during my childhood. That experience was fun
and I’d like to share its process. So let’s go!
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| Beautiful Easter table set by my friend |
Coloring the eggs
Different from what I’ve heard
before, the eggs were not emptied before the coloring process. Instead the eggs
are boiled on different ways to give them colors.
- For
orange eggs, we boiled them on onion peels and water;
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| Onion peels |
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| Orange egg colored with onion peels |
- For
yellow eggs, we boiled them on curcuma and water;
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| Curcuma |
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| Yellow egg colored with curcuma |
- For
grey eggs, we boiled them on blueberries, jam and water – I mean, our intention
was to get pink or purple eggs, but they looked cool anyway!
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| Blueberries and jam |
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| Grey egg colored with blueberries |
As you can see, the eggs look not
only colorful but also have interesting patterns. My friend taught me how to do
it using only three things: parsley leaves, sheer tights and rubber bands! Before
putting the eggs to boil, we “glued” the leaves on them with just a bit of
water. Then carefully dressed them nicely with a piece of tights and secured
the edge with a rubber band – not to loose so it wouldn’t open but not too tight
so it wouldn’t break the egg.
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| Sheer tights and rubber band on the egg |
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| Pattern made with parsley leaves |
After dressing the eggs on their cute
costumes it’s time to boil them on the color mixtures. We made a few eggs together
on Friday then my friend made a few more later on. She even mixed a few colors
and in the end we got many shades.
Games and traditions
My partner and I joined my friend and
her partner - also with their adorable baby daughter - for the Easter lunch on Sunday. There they taught us a fun game that
it’s done before eating the eggs. Each person chooses one and the winner each round
gets to keep the loser’s egg. I can proudly say I won the first round!
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| My egg of victory |
It’s tradition that the first winner
egg is not eaten and instead is kept safe all year around. That’s a sign of
protection for that person’s house. But not everyone does that anymore, so I
just saved my precious egg to eat for last. After the game, we got to have good
conversations over a delicious meal.
When I moved to the Netherlands I
knew it would be challenging to be away from my culture. It requires effort to
keep traditions going especially when our family is not around. What I didn’t
know is that living abroad would connect me with other cultures in a unique
way. Being able to share these moments makes it easier to call this place “home”.
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