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Apokreas and ....Easter in Greece
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Apokreas

•  Easter does not just happen in Greece on that
  Holy week. It begins with Apokreas, which is to
  Orthodox what Mardi Gras and Carnival is to
  Catholics. Several weeks of partying, a tradition
  that may go back to the celebrations of
  Dionysious, take place all over Greece with
  special celebrations in Patras, Athens, and in
  various other towns and villages, many with
  special activities such as the famous Goat dances
  of Skyros.
• In Athens the last two weekends of Apokreas
  people dress up in costume and go to the Plaka,
  hitting each other with plastic clubs that
  squeak, and throwing confetti. These clubs are
  thought to be a remnant of the veneration of the
  phallus from the ancient Dionysian festivals of
  Athens and in the town of Tyrnavo in Thessaly
  giant penises are paraded through the streets.

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• There are celebrations in Moschato and Rendi,
  between Athens and Pireaus, that are similar to
  being in New Orleans on Fat Tuesday. In Patras
  the celebrating goes on for forty days and as
  many as fifty-thousand people take part in the
  parades. But after the last weekend of Apokreas,
  known as cheese week (the week before is meat
  week) many Greeks begin their fasting on Clean
  Monday, which is a day for spending time with
  friends and family, going to the countryside and
  flying kites. From clean Monday to the week of
  Easter things calm down conciderably.

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Great Week

•   The week of Easter begins on Palm Sunday and
  there are church services everyday commemorating
  the last week in the life of Jesus Christ. The
  evening services are the most well attended of
  course, except for Wednesday when the Service of
  the Holy Unction is held in the afternoon.

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• On Thursday morning the service commemorates the
  Last Supper and the Betrayal of Christ. This is
  the day that the hard-boiled eggs are dyed red,
  signifying the blood of Christ, and the Easter
  bread, called tsoureki, is baked.
• The evening service is a long one and features
  twelve gospel readings. It is in this service
  that a two-dimensional figure of Christ on the
  cross is brought into the church and set up,
  while the church bells ring. In some places a
  vigil is kept in the church all night.

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•   From the point-of-view of a spectator from
  Friday it starts to get very interesting. The
  nails holding the figure of Christ are knocked
  off and the figure is taken down from the cross
  and wrapped in a white cloth. A large piece of
  cloth, embroidered with the image of Christ,
  called the epitaphios which has been decorated
  with flowers by the girls through the night, is
  brought into the church where it is sprinkled
  with rose-water and more flower petals are thrown
  upon it.

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• The bells of the church begin to toll and all the
  flags in Greece are lowered to half-mast in while
  women in the congregation weep in mourning for
  the dead Jesus. In the evening a funeral service
  is held and at about 9pm the epitaphios is taken
  from the church and with the bells tolling
  mournfully, is carried through the streets in a
  solemn procession. In cities, towns and villages
  with more than one church the epitaphios parades
  may join together at certain points.

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The resurrection of Anastasis

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•  
•  At 11pm on Saturday night pretty much the entire
  country is in church. The lights are turned off
  at midnight and the priest announces that Christ
  has arisen from the dead as candles are lit from
  his and then from each other. The tiny glow at
  the front of the church grows and soon the whole
  room is illuminated by the light of everyone's
  candles. At the stroke of midnight the priest
  intones the paschal hymn "Christ has risen from
  the dead and in so doing has trampled on death
  and to those in the tombs he has given life".

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• The church bells ring in celebration, fireworks
  go off, ships sound their sirens and the light
  and sound makes the 4th of July seem tame in
  comparison. People greet each other happily with
  the words Christos Anesti (Christ has arisen)
  which is replied to with Alithos Anesti (Truly He
  has arisen). Then everyone heads for home with
  their lighted candles where they trace the cross
  three times above the door and to bless trees and
  farm animals.
• Most people either stay home or go to a
  restaurant for the traditional bowl of
  margeritsa, a thick green soup made from the
  intestines of the lamb that will be roasted the
  next day, breaking their 40 day fast which began
  with the end of Apokreas. Gunshots, dynamite and
  fireworks will be going off for the next 24 hours
  or more shattering nerves and blowing off a
  finger or two.

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Easter Sunday

•  Easter day is most people's favorite day of the
  year. A lamb is roasted and friends and families
  get together to eat, drink, talk and dance. In
  some towns like Arachova and  Livadeia,  it is a
  community celebration with rows of lambs roasting
  in the village square. In other towns like
  Monemvasia, Rhodes, Hydra, Halkidiki, Koroni,
  Chania and Leros the effigy of Judas or Barabbas
  is burned. In Syros and Karpathos people bring
  their guns and shoot Judas as a scapegoat for
  society's ills. In the town of Asine in the
  Argolid they actually have a street battle with
  the men of the upper and lower parts of the
  village hurling insults and fireworks at each
  other.  

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• In southern Messenia people go to the main
  squares to watch the saetapolemos, which are
  rockets without sticks that the men hold
  while the force of the explosions makes them jump
  as if they are dancing. This practice
  supposedly goes back to the War of Independence
  when people of the area fashioned this home-made
  bombs to scare the horses of the Turks to force
  their riders to dismount and lose their
  advantage. During the afternoon the red eggs are
  brought out and each person takes one and hits
  their end against someone else's until the last
  person who has an un-cracked egg is considered
  the lucky person for the year.

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Easter Midnight Soup - (Magiritsa)

• Magiritsa is the soup that Greeks break their 40
  days fasting with after the midnight liturgy on
  Easter Saturday.
• a lamb's liver, heart, lights and intestines
• juice of 3 lemons
• salt
• 6 spring onions, trimmed, rinsed and finely
  sliced
• 25 gr. butter
• 2 cos lettuces, trimmed, shredded and rinsed
  carefully (use only their young leaves and
  hearts)
• about a teacupful of fresh dill or fennel, rinsed
  and finely chopped, or parsley
• 1.2 lt hot water
• salt and black pepper
• 60 gr. rice
• AvgolemonoSauce
• 2 eggs
• juice of 2 lemons

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• METHOD
• Rinse all the meat. Turn the intestines
  inside out with the help of a thin stick and
  rinse them thoroughly. Rub them with salt and
  lemon juice and rinse them again. Cube them into
  small portions. In a large saucepan, sautee the
  onions in the butter, until they start to change
  colour. Add the chopped intestines, liver, lights
  and heart, fry together for a few minutes,
  stirring. Add the shredded lettuces and all the
  fresh herbs and sautee for a few more minutes.
  Add the hot water, and seasoning, cover and cook
  for 30 minutes. Then add the rice and cook for a
  further 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let
  it stand for 10 minutes, before proceeding with
  the avgolemono sauce. Add the Avgolemono Sauce to
  the soup, stirring. Return to a very gentle heat
  for 2 minutes, stirring at the same time. It
  should be by now a quite a thick soup.

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Easter Lamb on the Spit

• INGREDIENTS
• To serve 6-8 persons, you need a lamb that
  weights about 5 kg!
• METHOD
• On Easter Sunday Morning, the fire is started at
  about 7.00 am to ensure that the wood is reduced
  to glowing embers by the time the roasting
  starts. The lamb or goat, having been properly
  cleaned, is rubbed with lemon all over his skin
  and seasoned with salt, pepper, oregano and thyme
  both outside and inside. Then the souvla, the
  long round iron stick, having also been properly
  cleaned and rubbed with lemon, is passed through
  the animal from one end and out through the head.
  The back feet are secured by passing one through
  the muscle of the other and are then tied with
  wire. It is also recommanded to tie with wire the
  spine of the lamb on the spit. Two iron poles
  with forked ends are inserted in the earth by the
  fire. At the beggining of the roasting session
  the lamb is at about 60-70 cm from the fire.
  Later the poles are lowered so the meat rests at
  a distance of 30-40 cm from the fire.

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• The long iron spit ends in a handle and
  members of the family take it in turns to sit and
  turn it almost continually (Now there are
  machines doing that for us!). While the meat is
  cooking they brush on a mixture of olive oil,
  lemon juice and oregano. A lamb roasted like
  this takes about 4 hours or less, presuming that
  it is of the desirable weight of 5 kgr maximum.
  It is vital that the lamb cooks very slowly, even
  if it takes longer than three hours. A clear
  indication that it is nearly cooked is when the
  flesh shrinks away from the bones. Please note
  that the fleshy parts (legs and shoulders) take
  longer to cook, so they draw most of the glowing
  embers to the two ends, making two small piles of
  them under the fleshy parts which gives those
  parts the extra heat they require, while the thin
  body is cooking at a slower speed. Serve with a
  lot of fresh season salad, taramosalata,
  melitzanosalata and Scarlet Easter Eggs.

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Red easter eggs

• INGREDIENTS
• Uncooked eggs
• Water
• 3/4 cup Vinegar
• Red food dye or coloring
• Vegetable oil
• A few cotton balls
• METHOD Carefully wash and dry each egg. Set a
  large pot of water to boil. Add a red dye or food
  coloring and 3/4 cup of vinegar to the water, and
  boil for a few minutes. Slowly lower the eggs
  into the pot, and when the water comes to a boil,
  lower the heat. Let eggs simmer for 15 min., then
  remove them carefully from the pot. If you plan
  to cook more eggs, add an additional 2 tbs.
  vinegar to the water. Wipe cooked eggs with an
  oil-soaked cotton ball, then wipe each egg with a
  clean dry cloth. Place on a platter. Serve cold.

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Kokoretsi

• INGREDIENTS
• Guts of lamb. You might need guts from more than
  one lamb. Ask for 2 hearts, 2 spleen, liver and 1
  lungs, 2 testicles
• Bowels (intestines) of lamb. At least 4 are
  required for a medium size kokoretsi
• oregano
• Salt
• Pepper
• Some olive oil

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• METHOD
• Wash the guts very thoroughly and cut them in
  small pieces. Be careful not to cut them in too
  small pieces because you will no be able to
  skewer them. Wash the bowels very carefully and
  try to clean them from inside. Leave them in a
  washbowl and keep the ends of each bowel in one
  side in order to be able to seperate them.
  Prepare the souvla (iron stick). Start skewering
  the guts in the iron stick until all are passed
  to the iron stick. Pin one end of the first bowel
  in the one side of the souvla and wind the
  intestine around the skewer. If the bowel reaches
  its end tie it with the end of the next bowel and
  continue to wind until all bowels are wrapped and
  no guts are visible (you should only see the
  bowels along the souvla). Season with salt,
  pepper and oregano. Prepare the fire and roast on
  all sides until guts are brown and crispy. Check
  that "kokoretsi" is ready and remove from fire.
  Cut the kokoretsi in cylinders of 5 cm wide in
  order to remove it from the souvla in pieces. Put
  in platter, oil the kokoretsi pieces, season with
  extra salt, pepper and oregano and serve.

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Greek Easter Cookies

• INGREDIENTS
• 2 cups butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup milk or orange juice
• 8 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon grated orange rind
• 1 egg

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• METHOD
• Sift together flour and baking powder and set
  aside. In large bowl, cream together butter and
  sugar. Add 4 egg yolks one at a time, beating
  well after each one. Add milk and flour. Work
  with the hands until dough is smooth. Add grated
  orange rind. Dough should be stiff so add
  additional flour if needed. Break off small
  portions of dough and roll out into pencil-size
  strips about 11 inches long. Fold each strip into
  thirds, sideways, and press lightly together at
  ends. Place cookies on ungreased baking sheet.
  Brush tops with beaten egg. Bake at 350 degrees F
  (175 degrees C) for 18 to 20 minutes.

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BYE!!!