Christians have the most important holiday of Easter - the Resurrection of Christ. By this day they begin to prepare for 7 weeks, observing the Great strict post. And now, when he comes to the very end, one week remains until the bright holiday, we have to do a lot to meet an important day, as Orthodox Christians believe.
Let's talk about what Easter signs and customs must be observed.
Great Passion Week
The most important last passionate week of Lent began. Why is it called that? Because these were the last days of the earthly life of the Son of God, filled with agony and suffering. All week long we must remember the life of the Savior, his terrible martyrdom on the cross, burial.
In ancient times, since Great Monday, only dry food was eaten in Russia, stopped court cases, avoided all sorts of entertainment, released prisoners from prisons and stopped such kinds of work as cutting wood, sewing, knitting, embroidering.
During the Holy Week, according to church traditions, the following rites were not performed:
- baptism of children;
- commemoration of the dead;
- wedding of the young;
- celebration of the days of memory of the saints.
Great Monday
From that day we started to clean up the houses, washed everything and cleaned it, tinted it, stained it up, repaired it.
This Monday is determined which summer is coming. In the early morning, you must go out into the street and look at the sky: if they are clean and the sun begins to flirt, then we can expect a good fruitful summer season. Such a clear morning - a harbinger of the fact that all the newlyweds, whose weddings will be played later this year, are waiting for a happy life in abundance and love.
In the morning on Great Monday it was customary to wash out of gold or silver dishes, which promised health, youth and financial well-being.
An ancient set for washing from silver with gilding
Great Tuesday
This day the housewives begin to think through the Easter menu, decide how to cook Easter cakes, what other dishes will be at the festive feast, what products should be purchased.
Also on the Great Tuesday, all the clothes, bedding, towels and tablecloths, towels and curtains are washed in the house. Tuesday ends with the fact that people must prepare their own festive clothes, which on Sunday will go to the all-night Easter service and lighting the cake, eggs.
Great Wednesday
This day they begin to clean carefully in the houses. Wash the windows, hang the drapes washed the day before, 
clean out kitchen utensils and dishes, carpets, wash floors, clean in cabinets and mezzanines, shelves and drawers. It's clear, one day you can not manage, so continue cleaning on the following day of the Great Holy Week - Pure Thursday.
Great Pure Thursday
It's why it's called clean, that by the evening it's time to finish all the cleaning work in the houses and apartments so that everything shines and sparkles. There is even such a popular belief: who did not have time to clean up on clean Thursday, who has dirt left in the houses, he will live in mud for the next year.
On Holy Thursday it is customary to go to church for service and bring home a passionate candle, then light it up all year, if someone from the family is seriously ill, it will help in healing.
You have to prepare Thursday salt. It is necessary to take an ordinary large salt and heat it in an oven, in modern conditions it is done in the oven. During the consecration of Easter cakes, salt is also put in the basket. And then, after this rite, it gains special healing power, can protect from any evil.
- If a person is unwell, it is necessary to dissolve a little Thursday salt in water and give the patient a drink.
- To ensure that in the house and family peace, comfort, peace and happiness always reign, a pinch of such salt is thrown at the head of each bed.
- To protect the house from grief and misfortune, in each corner it is necessary to pour a little Thursday salt( do this already in the evening, when all the cleaning work at the house is completed).
- If you feel that an evil man with evil thoughts has come to your house, add to it a pinch of such salt. And when he leaves, lightly shed all of his tracks.
- When the spouses begin to quarrel among themselves, they need to put a small canvas bag with salt on the pillow under the pillow.
- In order for young children to grow up healthy and cheerful, kind and reasonable, during their bathing you need to throw a little salt in a basin or a bath.
- If suddenly someone left home and does not return for a long time, you need to throw a pinch of salt into the fire.
Prepare the 
of this salt of the fourth salt, enough to last the whole year until the next Great Thursday. It can also be added to food for pets - cows, goats, pigs, sheep.
This day they wash not only the dwelling, and the owners also need to swim, wash off all their sins, you can soak in a bath or dip into an ice hole. Young girls on such Thursday always cut their braids, so that their hair becomes thicker and more beautiful. It is also customary in Clean Thursday for the first time to cut one-year-old children, to cut them up to this day was forbidden.
Great Thursday is considered to be the busiest day for housewives, because after lunch, when they themselves have bought themselves and ordered the houses, we need to start making cottage cheese pies, start dyeing eggs and start dough for cakes.
Great Good Friday
This Friday it is supposed to buy a lot of candles in the church and light them during the day in all rooms of your house. This is a terrible day and mournful, the son of God was crucified, died on the cross in suffering and torment. If possible, on Good Friday, Orthodox Christians completely refuse to eat as a sign of sorrow.
Good Friday is the day when the housewives cook the cakes from the previous day's test.
Before starting a responsible business, you need to read the prayer "Our Father" three times, then say "Lord, bless."And get to work.
- If the cakes are baked in an old Russian stove, then after cooking it is necessary to take a little ash out of it. It has healing power, it helps to remove spoilage, evil eye and spell, to cure a person from alcoholism.
- On Good Friday in all corners of the house one more time needs to be properly done with a rag. Then it is not washed, but neatly put in a bag in a secluded place. If a member of the family has a bad backache, then tying himself with such a rag, you can relieve the pain. If illnesses of legs or joints suddenly come across, then after bath procedures it is wound up with sore spots.
- Never use a fork or shovel this Friday.
Great Saturday
It is also a day of sorrow when all Orthodox Christians mourn for the deceased Jesus Christ. Any kind of fun, intimate connections, drinking of alcoholic beverages are forbidden.
Mistresses are prepared for tomorrow's great day and work in the kitchen, preparing dishes for a festive feast. By the evening all works stop, in the church the Easter service begins.
Try to 
to go for it. It is not easy - to endure the Vigil Service, but believe me, when they begin to beat church bells, when the world is proclaimed that Christ is Risen, sensations on the soul are inexpressible. We become little witnesses of the Great Sacrament, we learn and believe that life has overcome death, and good has triumphed over evil.
If for some reason you can not go to the service that night, do not go to bed early. Go out at midnight to the street, turn your gaze to the sky, and you will feel how God's grace descends, you will understand by some parts of your soul that are beyond our consciousness, that Jesus Christ is risen.
These are the happiest moments for truly Orthodox people.
The Bright Resurrection of Christ - Easter
When the whole family comes out of the church, they sit down at the festive Easter table to break up.
- The mistress steleth the most beautiful and snow-white tablecloth, sets the dishes prepared on the eve of the day, spreads out of the basket consecrated Easter cakes, easter eggs and eggs.
- Then all together need to stand before the icons and read the prayers.
- First
the oldest man in the family should break the cake out of the cake and serve it to the hostess. After that, he cuts all the cake and distributes a piece to all the members of the family gathered at the table, thus inviting them to break up. - Everyone eats Easter cake, then each member of the family takes a painted, consecrated testicle, and then one can proceed to the other dishes. In this holiday wine is consumed, but you can not get drunk. Signs on Easter say that if someone gets drunk on drunk, that God will punish him, and he will walk the whole year as if he were half asleep.
- After the break, people go to their guests or take their relatives and friends, congratulate each other on the holiday, while saying: "Christ is Risen!", Which should be answered: "Truly Risen!".Then three times they kiss each other on the cheek and give Easter souvenirs and gifts. On the Feast of the Bright Resurrection, according to custom, one must go to one's parents and godparents.
If you did not manage to get to the All-night Easter service, then know that the beginning of the consecration of Easter cakes is somewhere around 4-5 am and lasts throughout the day, as long as the parishioners go to church, the father always waits even the slowest Christians.
But try to do it on time, because the church ministers who have conducted such a long, most serious service in the year, you need to rest and celebrate this great day.
And yet, when the eggs are consecrated for Easter, it is customary to place several eggs in the baskets of church ministers that go ahead of the priest, as gifts. You can also put candy, cakes and buns, small cakes, cookies.
Traditions of dyeing Easter eggs
Perhaps some still do not know where the tradition came from, paint eggs for Easter. A colored testicle is a symbol of this holiday.
When the Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene came with a sermon to Rome, she offered to Tiberius, who was ruling then in the Roman Empire, an egg and proclaimed that Christ was Risen. The emperor questioned whether the dead people could be resurrected and said: "It is also impossible, as if your given egg now turned red."And at that very moment a miracle happened, the egg flushed.
Christians have believed in the resurrection of the Son of God and have recognized the egg as the symbol of life from now on. The egg shell symbolizes the coffin of the Lord, and the red color is the blood that Jesus Christ shed for the salvation of people. That is why Easter eggs are painted in red color.
But today the custom of painting eggs implies not only red color. The holiday is very bright, bright and joyful. As a sign of this, Christians began to use any colors: green, yellow, orange, blue, pink.
The most traditional way is to use onion husks. It gives a rich burgundy shade. Also for this purpose, apply all sorts of food colorings. If you doubt their naturalness, you can use natural substances that are always at hand in the kitchen of a good housewife:
- a light brown shade can be obtained with the help of coffee or strong tea;
- blue
or blue shade will add the juice of red cabbage; - for raspberry or purple color use water in which beets were cooked;
- bright yellow color can be obtained if you make an aqueous solution of turmeric( enough to stir 1 teaspoon of this seasoning in 1 liter of water);
- green color is obtained with the help of decoction of nettle or spinach;
- grape juice, obtained from dark varieties, will give a purple or lilac color to the testicles.
For staining the eggshell with natural substances, pre-cooked eggs are simply put overnight in the above liquids and in the morning they get just a riot of shades.
Now there are many ways to decorate Easter eggs: they are made marbled, with the help of egg whites, they stick confetti, lace braid or thin satin ribbons, bright threads of mulina or cut out patterns from napkins in the form of flowers, butterflies.
Especially like the painted Easter eggs for children, they love to bang them with each other, figuring out whose egg will be stronger. Be sure to explain to children why they paint eggs for Easter, so that from an early age the child would understand that it is not just fun or entertainment, but a symbol of a big bright holiday.
After the consecration of Easter eggs, try not to eat everything for the holidays, but leave a few pieces to be taken to the cemetery on the graves of the deceased relatives on the day of commemoration of all the deceased - Red Hill.
Shells from Easter eggs can not be thrown away, in the church there is a special place where you can then bring all the shells and leave.
Easter signs and rites
Of course, the most important significance of the holiday of Easter is the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the victory of life over death. But also for farmers it meant the real coming of spring and the beginning of agricultural work. This is the reason for so many rites and signs:
- In order to bring prosperity to the house in the morning, one should wash from the dishes, in which the consecrated Easter egg and coins are put.
- Early
on Easter morning, you have to go to the chickens and shug them off from the perch, so that they are not lazy and bear testicles well. - Also this morning, watching for pets, which behaves quietly - to the court had to.
- For Easter, consecrated in the church with a dyed egg, it is necessary to cross the child and give him a kiss, then the next year no one can jinx the baby.
- If there is a thunderstorm for Easter, autumn should be waiting for this dry and late.
- The gloomy sky on this day means a cloudy and cold summer.
- When you hear the bells ringing at Easter, you have to say: "Christ is risen, for my family I ask for health, for the house of prosperity, for the land of harvest".
- Spouses should be christened so that none of the strangers could see, otherwise there will be separation.
Many are interested in the question of when you can start working. The whole week after Easter is called light. All seven days are allowed to celebrate, rejoice, have fun.
But no one has canceled home chores, so do them reasonably. Do not you want to keep dirty dishes for a week, you have to wash it. But to do the needlework, to do general cleaning in houses, to wash and iron better on the fourth day after Easter.
Moreover, if you do everything right in the Great Holy Week, you will not need special economic household chores.
Now you know a lot about the Great Holy Week and the Bright Easter Week, about the best day in the life of an Orthodox Christian, about the traditions and rituals of this holiday. We hope that there are no more questions about why they paint eggs for Easter and how to do it when you need to cook cakes or clean your house. Prepare for Easter in advance, as expected, try to meet this holiday so that then the whole year was bright and joyful. Let the Easter bell ringing affect a part of your soul, and in your little life you will definitely win the victory of good over evil. Related Videos:
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