Orthodox Easter In Russia

Kristos Voskres! Vo Istinu Voskres!

How to  celebrate Russian Easter

It’s time for the Easter Bunny! This Spring millions of people across the globe will be celebrating Easter in their own ways. Christians in Russia have been celebrating this holiday since the time of Christ with public gatherings and feasts.

Russia is traditionally an Eastern Orthodox country, as opposed to the Western Christianity of the United States that is predominantly composed of Protestants and Roman Catholics. These different sects of Christianity are all celebrating the same thing, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but they often do it on different days. The Eastern Orthodox church keeps a different calendar than the Western Church does, and therefore Easter is often celebrated at different times of the year depending on which calendar you follow.

This Spring, people all around the world and in Russia, who celebrate Eastern Orthodox Easter will be spending their family time dying and painting eggs, baking Paska and Kulich, thus continuing an age-old tradition. The most popular color to dye eggs is the red color, which  is meant to symbolize the blood of Christ. By Russian tradition, instead of hiding eggs like we do here in America, many homes in Russia will have eggs on display all year around. That’s why the wooden hand-painted Pisanky eggs were created. Russia has long revered the egg as an eternal symbol of life.

Pisanki eggs are very popular in Russian homes. Even the royal family of Russia celebrated the holiday with elaborate egg displays. First Faberge imperial Easter egg presented by Emperor Alexander III to his wife the empress Maria Feodorovna at Easter 1885.

This Spring, people all around the world and in Russia, who celebrate Eastern Orthodox Easter will be dying their eggs red,  And just like here in America, Easter in Russia is always accompanied by a large feast where family and friends come together to appreciate one another and celebrate life. Happy Easter! 

Pisanki, Andy Warhol, and the Atomic Bomb.

Famed American artist Andy Warhol, Pisanki (also spelled Pisanky), and the atomic bomb, don’t seem like they belong in the same sentence together. However It seems Andy Warhol’s mother, who had a big influence on his artistic talents, decorated eggs in the Pisanki style during Easter time in Ukraine.

According to Raymond M. Herbenick, these decorations apparently had an affect on some of Warhol’s work, who sees in Warhol’s 1965 Atomic Bomb “…a series of mushroom clouds, the pattern being similar to mushrooms or wheat sheaves drawn on pysanky.”

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