Wordless Wednesday 59

...going through the family photo album...

Easter hot air lanterns

A weird and wonderful Easter tradition that is only found in one area of Greece (my dad's hometown, as it happens) is the sending up of hot air lanterns. This happens on Saturday night during the church service and all through Easter Sunday and Easter Monday in the town of Leonidio. The lanterns are made of paper tissue in different colours, they have a circular bottom and conical top, and are man-sized. The bottom is kept together by copper wires in the shape of a cross. A rag is soaked in gas and fixed in the centre of the cross, then it is lit and the lantern held in place while it fills with hot air. Once it's ready, it starts flying up and up and up!

It's a spectacular sight against the night sky, especially as there are hundreds of lanterns leaving each of the town's five churches at precisely the same moment, just as the priest in each church announces that "Christ has risen". You can see what it looks and sounds like in the next video, but be warned - there are fireworks, church bells and bangers going off, so it's very loud. You may want to turn down the sound on your PC before you click play.



There are more lanterns being sent up throughout Easter Sunday. You always see people looking up when a lantern goes past - a good idea if you are to avoid the risk of catching fire, as sometimes they fall back down on top of houses or in woodland. Children in particular are fascinated by lanterns and as soon as they're old enough to ride a bike they are on lantern alert. The moment there's a lantern coming down, there are groups of kids rushing to the spot where it falls. The first one to get there can claim the lantern as his/her own, and can take it home to patch it up and send it back up. Sometimes lanterns get patched up again and again.

This is a lantern that my cousin rescued, being sent up for the third or fouth time, judging by the number of patch jobs.

While looking for videos showing the hot air lanterns, I found this next one. It's professionally made and a little longer (just under 10 mins), but if you can spare the time, it shows the whole of the Easter celebrations, starting with the decoration of the Epitaphios on Good Friday and finishing with the hot air lanterns on Sunday evening. My favourite bit is around the 8:25 mark, where you see three young children (too young to chase after the lanterns themselves) discussing how many of them burnt the night before. It's exactly what we were like as kids, and just comes to show that things don't change *that* much from generation to generation!



There are plenty more photos of the hot air lanterns on Flickr. Have a look here for some spectacular ones (not taken by me).

This is officially my last Easter post for this year. Hope you've enjoyed it :-)

The Twilight saga

Having read Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse (the last one in 14 hours flat) my dilemma now is whether to buy Breaking Dawn in hardback or wait impatiently until it comes out in paperback. I have a personal rule of not buying hardbacks, and I've only broken it once, when the 7th Harry Potter book came out.

Will this be the second time? I think it might...

Obamania

Two weeks ago I was looking for postcards to send to a friend who recently moved to the States. This one caught my eye, not only because it's showing Barack and Michelle Obama meeting the Queen, but most importantly because the actual photo was taken just days before it appeared as a postcard.

Wouldn't it be great if big events like this one were produced as postcards almost immediately? It'd sure make Postcrossing so much more interesting.

Wordless Wednesday 58

Happy Easter part 2

On Easter Saturday, the sombre mood lifted and everyone appeared a lot more cheerful in anticipation of Easter. In the morning we went into town for some last minute shopping. These are some of the unusual window displays we spotted: Easter candles, lanterns and of course lamb.


Candles have an important role in the Saturday night church service, as they are lit just after midnight once the priest has announced that "Christ has risen". The light of the candles is considered blessed and people carry it home, sometimes using paper lanterns.


Before we left for church just after 11 PM, we had already prepared the table and put some meat in the oven. The Holy Week is a period of fasting, which is broken only after the return from the Saturday midnight service.


We had red dyed eggs and decorated ones too.


Here are a couple of photos from the midnight service.


The next day we had more eggs, traditional Easter bread (tsoureki) and Easter biscuits (koulouria) for breakfast. Yummie.


Then we went into town to partake in the dancing and lamb eating.


It was a gloriously sunny day and very hot too. Hotter, in fact, than the average English summer day.


Happy Easter! Xristos Anesti!

Good Friday

Orthodox Easter is often celebrated at a different time to Western Easter. This is because the Orthodox church retained the Julian calendar after the Gregorian calendar was introduced in Europe in 1582. This year, Easter in Greece, Cyprus, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania etc. falls on 19th April. Accordingly, yesterday was Good Friday.


Good Friday is a day of mourning. In the morning, people attend church to help decorate a symbolic coffin with flowers, which is called the Epitaphios. This is carried around each town in a procession lamenting the death of Christ. People follow this procession singing hymns and holding lit candles.


Once the procession is over, the Epitaphios is placed inside the church.


People queue to pray and pay their respects one last time.


You may notice the sides of this Epitaphios bear no flowers. This is because people have pulled the flowers off and taken them home as they're considered to be blessed.


After the service and procession, we went for a walk around town, and took some photos of the decorations and shop windows. There were Easter eggs and ladybirds everywhere.


These are decorated Easter candles, which children (and sometimes adults) take to church on Saturday night for the midnight Easter service.


Godparents buy Easter candles for their godchildren, along with chocolate eggs, special Easter bread and shoes or clothes.


The is one of the funniest pictures I took. It's the window of a children's clothes shop, suitably decorated with a farm theme. One of the chickens must have tried to escape, but then discovered it couldn't fly...