As some of you already know, I'm spending one year in Greece at my relatives', as my school encourages us to do one year abroad in 11th grade and I thought I might as well learn some greek, since I'm part Greek, too, but had no knowledge of the language of my ancestors! :O
(And I've been told a faraway ancestor of mine battled against the Persians at Thermopylae, make of that what you want.)

Now about the topic of this post.. Easter!

As you may or may now know, people in Greece belong to Christian Orthodoxy. In the Orthodox Church, the most important festivity is Easter, because, while at Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus, at Easter we celebrate his resurrection.
Makes sense: everybody is born, but nobody resurrects after death.

So.. how are the festivities?
Well, one week before Easter, there is the "Big Week" (Μεγαλη Eβδoμαδα), during which people fast. They aren't allowed to eat any product derived from animals, real Vegan-style!
What amazed me is that everybody does it. It's not something like "yeah, it's a religious tradition, but only the old pensioners and a couple others do it", but really every family!
Exceptions are made for the children, of course.

On Friday there was a procession in the town's streets and many people carried candles, as sign of moarning for Christ's death.
Nice occasion to take a walk in town, as most greeks just drive back and forth in their cars, even the shortest distances, which annoys me, because I don't get to know the streets that well when being driven around as opposed to walking.

On midnight at Saturday the climax of all festivities takes place: Christ's resurrection.

For that occasion, each person buys a unique candle (the candle business totally blooms here before Easter, upon entering Carrefour the other day all I saw were candles everywhere).
And by unique, I really mean unique.
There are all kinds of candles and many come attached with a little gift (mine was white with red stripes of cloth and some gold paint and had a really pretty bracelet glued on it), which can be removed only after the ceremony.
My little cousins had a candle with a Ronaldinho figure, a candle with a wooden stealth fighter and a candle with a ceramic fairy doll (guess which candles were for boys and which for girls).
So, shortly before midnight people gather with their unlit candles around the churches and wait for the bells to start ringing.
And when they do, they ring like mad and don't stop for a good half an hour!
At this point the high priest uses his candle, lit from a fire that is kept burning at all times in a small lamp, and lits the candles of those standing around him. The fire spreads like that, from candle to candle, it's most likely symbolic for the redemption that was spread on humanity after Christ's death or something like that.
Then people wish each other many years (Xρovια πoλα) and a happy resurrection (καλη Avασταση) and go to eat lamb and feta cheese (greek goat cheese). At midnight.
(Delicious. I ate two plates full.)
Oh, and there were fireworks, too! I heard there's more fireworks here on Easter than on New Year's! (I returned shortly to Italy for the Christmas holidays, so I didn't see it here.)

Today then everybody makes parties, most people grill a lamb and eat it with friends and family over.

I had a lot of fun here, orthodox Easter really rocks.
This year it happened to be on the same day as catholic and protestant Easter, but usually the two are apart a few days. Something to do with how the date is calculated.

End of wall of text.
Feel ACCULTURED!