Eggs for Easter - a traditional gift of Christians

The celebration of Easter begins in a deepantiquities. This is the main and most revered feast of Christians around the world. About five thousand years ago, the Jews celebrated it in the early spring as a day of cattle ranching. Later it was timed to the beginning of the harvest, and even later it was associated with the departure of Jews from Egypt. A completely different meaning was put on this holiday by Christians and began to celebrate it as the day of the resurrection of Christ.

In 325 the Ecumenical Council of Christian Churchesdecided to postpone the holy holiday for a later period after the Jewish holiday. The same council determined the celebration of the Great Easter on the first Sunday, after the day of spring equinox. Therefore, the holiday does not have an exact date and is celebrated between the twenty-second of March and the twenty-fifth of April.

The Christianity that came from Byzantium to Russiahas brought and the tradition of celebrating Easter. The week that precedes the holiday is called Passion or Great. Orthodox Slavs preserved many traditions associated with Holy Week. The last days of this week are especially significant. For example, the Great Thursday, more often called "clean", and not only because on this day the Orthodox sought to be spiritually cleansed, receive communion, but also to be purified by water - to swim in the ice-hole, soak in the bath and drench with spring water before sunrise.

Since Great Thursday, preparations have been made for the festive feast -

painted eggs for Easter and traditionally laid them on a young growth of wheat or oats.

The Easter table was magnificent, it was differentspecial ornaments for Easter. The whole table and festive cakes, including, were decorated with homemade flowers, which the girls prepared long before the Holy Holiday from colored paper. Easter dishes were mainly associated with the symbolism of the harvest. For example, remaining after the celebrations, Easter eggs, consecrated pies and leftovers of meat and fish dishes, were buried in an open field, and one colored egg was stored until the very beginning of sowing.

The holiday lasted all week, and all this timethe table remained covered. To him, beggars beggared, squalid, fed enough, gifted with gifts. But what do they give for Easter? Usually it was dyed eggs, cakes, and sometimes money.

The custom of decorating eggs for Easter is still from the ancientRomans Greeks and Egyptians. They considered the egg to be the symbol of the birth of a new life. Painting eggs in different colors for Easter, they became long before the adoption of these peoples by Christianity. And the Christian custom of painting eggs, according to legend, is associated with Mark Aurelius - the emperor of ancient Rome. As the same legend says, on his birthday, his mother's hen chopped an egg, as if painted with red dots.

According to legend, the first egg Mary Magdalene gaveTable - the emperor of Rome. The faithful follower of Christ came to the emperor with good news about the resurrection of Christ, to which Tiberius grinned and said that this can not be, as well as the fact that the egg donated by Mary would suddenly turn red. At that very moment, a white chicken egg in the hands of the emperor turned into a bloody scarlet color.