The Many Faces of Easter in Poland
Easter, also called Pascha – the celebration of Christ’s resurrection – is the oldest and most important Christian holiday. In Poland, it’s celebrated by Christians of various denominations. Let’s look at the many faces of Polish Easter, as well as the springtime holidays of other faiths.
Because the resurrection took place immediately after the Jewish holiday of Pesach (Passover), the name Pascha was transferred to Easter. Holy Saturday is also considered to be Easter because in ancient times the measurement of the day began at sunset, and in the liturgy of that day an evening mass is celebrated. There was also an all-night mass, which is still practised in the Orthodox Church.
The Jewish holiday of Passover
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Preparations for Passover, pictured: the traditional burning of the ‘chametz’, photo: Dominik Sadowski / Agencja Gazeta
Pesach is also known as the Spring Festival (Hebrew: Chag Ha’Aviv), the Feast of Unleavened Bread. According to the biblical account, Pesach (which means to ‘skip’, ‘omit’ or ‘pass over’ in Hebrew) commemorates the omission of Israelites’ homes during the last of the Egyptian plagues. Pesach (Pejsech in Yiddish, Pascha in Polish) is the oldest Jewish holiday – celebrated even when the Jews were wandering in the desert, traditionally on the first full moon of spring. Today, it remains a central holiday for Jewish communities in Poland and around the world.
According to the Bible, Passover lasts from the 14th to the 21st day of the month of Nisan, and one day longer in the diaspora. The actual holiday occurs on the first and seventh day of Passover, while on the remaining days between those dates (Chol HaMoed), work isn’t forbidden. On the eve of Passover, every family’s first-born son is expected to fast in remembrance of the rescue of the Israelites’ first-born sons in Egypt.
On the first evening of Passover, families meet to eat a festive dinner and read the Haggadah – a secular text about the exodus from Egypt. The meal, which is eaten with specially purified cutlery, includes a roasted leg of lamb, eggs cooked in salted water, matzah and vegetables. Four glasses of wine are drunk, representing the four expressions of deliverance promised by God. One of the children asks the head of the family questions about the meaning of the Passover rituals, and then everyone recites the Hallel Psalms.
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A speech by David Kahane, the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, at the Seder meal during Passover in 1947, photo: CAF / PAP
On the second evening of Passover, the ‘Counting of the Omer’ begins. After the evening prayer, the cantor in the synagogue announces: ‘Today is the first (second, third, etc.) day of the Omer’. The 49-day period between Pesach and Shavuot commemorates the death of 24,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva. During the holiday there must be nothing leavened (chametz) in the home.
Passover is considered a holiday of liberation, as indicated by the symbols associated with it. The sacrificial lamb is a sign that the Angel of Death bypassed the Israelites, while unleavened matzah, the ‘bread of affliction’, symbolises the haste in which the Israelites left Egypt. Bitter maror herbs remind Jews of the oppression and misery of their lives in the land of the Pharaohs.
Passover, the sacrificial lamb and the Hallel hymn are the first but not the only clues linking the Old Testament tradition of Christians’ ‘elder brothers in faith’ with the canon of their spirituality. The term ‘elder brothers in faith’ points to the common heritage of Christians and Jews, which is the Old Testament. This common heritage is also sometimes called ‘the faith of Abraham’, but it’s clear that it also applies to the faith of the other patriarchs and prophets, especially Isaac and Jacob.
For Isaac and Jacob believed, like Christians, in a single, personal God who reveals himself throughout human history. They believed that God gives man life and calls him, and that it’s people’s duty to respond to this divine call and undertake the tasks God has given them. For many Jewish communities today, this is embodied in the principle of tikkun olam, interpreted as a duty to ‘heal the world’.
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The Lord’s Tomb in the Roman Catholic Parish of Christ the King, Rzeszów, 2019, photo: Patryk Ogorzałek / Agencja Gazeta
The Saturday night mass in the Orthodox Church that was mentioned in the introduction has become an outdoor procession in the Catholic Church. In Poland, the resurrection mass and procession are celebrated in the morning. They’re announced by a solemn ringing of bells, proclaiming that Christ has risen.
In some villages and small towns, the resurrection procession is accompanied by the lighting of firecrackers, and sometimes by the tradition of beating drums (Janowiec, Przeworsk, Kazanów) or tarabany, i.e. Turkish kettledrums, which – according to the perpetrators of this uproar – is supposed to wake up the world to a new and better life. In accordance with centuries-old tradition, ‘Lord’s Tombs’ are constructed in churches on Good Friday, when, after the Good Friday liturgy, the body of Christ (in the form of a wafer placed in a monstrance) is transferred to a symbolic tomb.
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Highlanders heading to church to have their Easter baskets blessed, Biały Dunajec, 20th April 2019, photo: Marcin Szkodziński / Forum
Easter rituals in churches are connected with traditions celebrated at home. During the Easter breakfast, family members wish each other well, share an egg that was blessed at church the day before, and eat the remaining contents of the Easter basket. Tables decorated with boxwood, pussy willows and the first spring flowers are laden with eggs, cold meats, and special Easter cakes and pies.
Easter Sunday is remembered throughout the liturgical year by means of the celebration of Sundays. They’re referred to as ‘the Pascha of the week, during which we celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death, the completion in Him of the work of the first creation and the beginning of “the new creation”’, as Pope John Paul II expressed it in his letter Dies Domini.
Easter Sunday and Monday are traditionally spent with one’s family. In some regions of Poland, many aspects of Easter celebrations are derived from folk customs. Some were adopted from Old Slavic customs, including: Easter breakfast, decorated Easter eggs, the blessing of food for the Easter breakfast and Easter palms carried in processions on Palm Sunday. This also applies to Jezusek Palmowy (a wooden statue of Christ on a donkey, carried or pulled on a cart during processions on Palm Sunday), Śmigus-dyngus (a tradition on Easter Monday when boys drench girls with water), dziady śmigustne (a tradition on Easter Monday in the village of Dobra, when young men dress up in handmade straw costumes), Emaus i Rękawka (a two-day festive Easter fair in Kraków), egg tapping and kurek po dyngusie (when young men drive a live cockerel around the village, tied to a decorated cart).
Other such traditions include Siuda Baba (an old folk custom in Lednica Górna and Wieliczka, in which a man dressed as a shabbily clothed woman, with his face blackened by soot, walks from house to house on Easter Monday, smearing girls’ faces with soot), the ‘hanging of Judas’ (when an effigy of Judas Iscariot is hanged, tortured and burned by villagers) and the ‘burial of sour rye soup and herring’ (a tradition of hanging herring from a tree and burying a pot of żurek in the ground to symbolise the end of Lent). And let’s not forget pucheroki (when boys wearing conical hats made of colourful tissue paper, with soot smeared on their faces, walk door to door on Palm Sunday, singing, reciting poems, and asking for donations of food and sweets), and przywołówki (a tradition celebrated in Szymborze, in which young bachelors gather in the centre of the village and recite poems about the local maidens).
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Blessing of food before Orthodox Easter in the Church of Saint Elijah, Białystok, photo: Marcin Onufryjuk / Agencja Gazeta
In the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, Easter is referred to as Pascha, the Resurrection of Christ or the Resurrection of the Lord. For the Orthodox clergy and congregations, Easter is the most important ‘feast of feasts’ in the liturgical calendar. The Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, which means that Orthodox feasts usually occur later than Catholic ones.
As in the Catholic Church, preparations for the Easter holiday begin with a 40-day fast. During the fast, Orthodox Christians don’t eat meat, fish, dairy products or white bread. Strict fasting – when no food or liquid is consumed – is observed on Good Friday.
On Holy Saturday, Orthodox Christians, like Catholics, bless their food. The contents of the baskets brought to church are very similar: eggs, bread, salt, cold meat and cheese. The baskets must also contain special Easter cakes. The eggs are brought to the church peeled, as anything that has been blessed must not be thrown away.
Easter matins are celebrated from Easter Saturday to Easter Sunday, preceded by a vigil. A piece of cloth bearing the image of Christ (placed in a symbolic tomb in the centre of the church on Good Friday) is solemnly returned to the altar. The service begins with a procession circling the church three times. The priest hits a cross three times on the church door as a symbol of the removal of the stone from the tomb of the risen Christ. The congregation and clergy enter the church while the choir sings. The mass ends with the anointing of the parishioners with holy oil.
During Holy Week, the royal doors of the iconostasis remain open, symbolising the stone removed from Christ’s tomb. During this time, solemn Matins and the Holy Liturgy are celebrated every day. On the Resurrection Day, Orthodox Christians share the artos – bread bearing the image of the Risen Christ which has been blessed by a priest.
During the mass, the clergy greet the worshippers with the words ‘Christ has risen’, and they reply, ‘Truly he has risen’. People approach each other and wish each other well. It’s a long mass that lasts until morning. Afterwards, the blessed food can be eaten. The Easter breakfast is festive. Families share an egg, the symbol of life, and wish each other well.
The dishes are slightly different than in the Catholic tradition. There must be special Easter cakes and paskha, a dish made of white cheese, butter, egg yolks and nuts.
Folk traditions related to Easter differ from Catholic ones. There are no symbols such as lambs, bunnies or chickens. There are, however, colourful Easter eggs – an adornment of the Easter table and a gift for loved ones.
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Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Cieplice, Jelenia Góra, photo: Mieczysław Michalak / Agencja Gazeta
Members of Christian denominations that arose from the Reformation meet at Easter services to rejoice in Jesus’s resurrection, praise God together and contemplate the Holy Scriptures. Although Easter celebrations differ slightly from church to church, the services always have a joyful and exalted character
Protestants don’t fast for 40 days, although some limit meat dishes on Good Friday. Like Catholics, Protestants prepare for Easter during Holy Week, which starts on Palm Sunday and is devoted to reflection on God’s Word.
In the Evangelical-Augsburg Church, an evening service is held on Maundy Thursday, which commemorates the events of the Last Supper.
Amongst Lutherans, Holy Communion is given to all believers in two forms – bread and wine. In Lutheran churches, Maundy Thursday is dominated by white, a symbol of purity and innocence.
Good Friday is the most important holiday for Lutherans – in Protestant countries it’s a day off from work. It’s celebrated in silence and contemplation. The bells are silent, the colour black dominates the altar and pulpit, and the altar cross is covered with a parament as a sign of mourning. The most important service, the ‘Mass of the Lord’s Supper’, takes place on Good Friday, a day on which the Eucharist is not celebrated at all in the Catholic Church.
During the solemn Lutheran services, as in Catholicism, excerpts from the Holy Scriptures are read concerning Christ’s passion on the cross. The death of Jesus and its significance for believers and the whole world is then commemorated. Christ’s death is central to the Protestant faith, for through it every believer is saved, regardless of their works. In some Protestant churches, the resurrection of Christ is treated only symbolically or the reality of the event is even questioned.
On Holy Saturday, some parishes hold short services, sometimes in cemeteries. The liturgical colour is black. It’s a day that combines the bitterness and pain of Christ’s death with the hopeful anticipation of the Resurrection. Lutherans in Poland don’t bless food or paint Easter eggs, although they do share an egg at Easter breakfast and give each other wishes.
Before they sit down to breakfast on Easter Sunday, however, they go to church for the resurrection service. In many parishes, the faithful say as they enter the church: ‘Christ is risen’. Others reply: ‘The Lord is risen indeed’.
In many families, it’s customary to give children chocolate eggs or bunnies – but only the youngest ones, because older children have been taught that the material aspects of Easter aren’t important. True faith renounces superstitions and folk traditions, as well as frantic pre-Easter shopping and expensive gifts.
Baptists celebrate Easter in a similar way. Their service on Easter Sunday also differs little from the weekly Sunday service in the church. It lasts about two hours, half of which is devoted to hymns sung by the choir.
Mormons, or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, celebrate Easter with a ‘sacrament meeting’ on Resurrection Sunday. Everything takes place as usual: reception of the sacrament in the form of bread and water (total abstinence applies, so wine is replaced by water), singing of hymns, prayers and sermons. Then everyone attends Sunday school, where they study the Scriptures.
Preparing for Easter is an individual matter for each member of the Mormon Church. They usually reflect on the death and resurrection of Christ by talking about it in church. They don't prepare special food or a festive dinner.
Mormons don’t fast before Easter because they fast monthly – no food or liquids are consumed on the first Sunday of every month.
There are no crosses hanging in Mormon churches, as its members don’t recognise religious symbols. While they commemorate Christ’s suffering, they don’t use the symbol of death – because He lives.
Christians who don’t celebrate Easter
Some Christian denominations don’t celebrate Easter. Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Easter for several reasons. They believe that Jesus commanded his followers to celebrate only one holiday – the anniversary of the Last Supper, commonly called the ‘Memorial of Christ’s Death’ – on the eve of the 14th day of Nisan. They also believe that Christians shouldn’t celebrate Easter because some of the customs derive from ancient pagan fertility rites.
Easter isn’t celebrated by the Christian Pentecostal Community (a radical branch of the Pentecostal Church in Poland), the Restored Church of God, and others.
The incarnation of God in man and belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ is the fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam. The Arabic name of Jesus, who is one of Islam’s prophets, is Isa ibn Maryam. This name is mentioned 26 times in the Koran.
According to the Koran, Jesus was a prophet, and the Messiah whose appearance was foretold in earlier prophecies. Muslims believe that Jesus was created by Allah in Mary’s womb without the participation of a man, but he was not God or the second person of the Christian Trinity. Because Muslims don’t accept the Christian idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world to redeem it, their religious tradition lacks holidays that directly relate to Christmas and Easter. The same is true for the members of other non-Christian religions in Poland.
Originally written in Polish, Apr 2020, translated by Scotia Gilroy, Feb 2021, edited by LD, Mar 2021