Orthodox Christians mark Good Friday

jaja, Uskrs
Pixabay

Orthodox Christians in Serbia are marking Good Friday with no church bells sounding and a variety of customs including the dyeing of eggs for Easter.

The Orthodox church uses a different system to calculate the date of Easter than the Catholic and Protestant churches. According to those calculations, Easter sometimes falls on the same date for all churches and sometimes, like this year, it falls on different dates.

Serbian Orthodox churches do not ring their bells until Easter morning and church services are limited. The Easter fast which lasts 7 weeks ends on Saturday before Eastern Sunday.

The beliefs in some parts of the country are that no labor should be done on Good Friday while in other areas, part of the custom is to sweep the home with a broom that is thrown away to get all the evil and impurities out of the house. The only work that should be done is dyeing eggs. Traditionally the eggs are boiled in water with onion skins added to it. The eggs can be dyed with other coloring and the tradition is to use only red (symbolizing Christ’s divinity) and blue (symbolizing Christ’s humanity). The first of the eggs taken out of the pot is left to serve as a guardian of the household for the next year.

Other customs including predicting the year’s harvest – warm and sunny weather supposedly means a good fruit harvest while rain means the opposite.