30 Apr 2009, Posted by justin in the category, 0 Comments

The Festival For the Dead

Well life certainly is different here in Moldova during Easter. I recently had a chat about Easter with couple who I regularly meet up with as language contacts after bumping into them in the city. Whilst they were fascinated with the Western world’s custom of eating rabbits that are made out of chocolate (which is kind of strange when you think about it), we have been intrigued by Moldovan traditions over Easter, and it has been an incredibly insightful occasion that has brought a better understanding to the Moldovan way of life.

Whilst beautiful feasts (as pictured above), the traditional Pushca cake, along with the cracking of hard-boiled eggs with a partner may not seem overtly foreign, ‘the festival for the dead’ evokes a truly insightful perception on Moldovan customs. This event, a long time tradition celebrated during the easter period, provides a greater understanding on how a country dominated by Orthodoxy really is chalk and cheese to our home culture. The day typically consists of a family outing to the cemetery, where they celebrate a picnic lunch over the tombstone of deceased family members. At some stage during their outing, after the family patiently waits for the priest to make his way through peak traffic as other families take part in the tradition, the priest will pray for the deceased. Of course in a day and age where nothing comes cheap, the family is required to offer gifts of food, money and a drink of wine in return. The belief is that through such an ordeal the dead will earn more rights in heaven. By the end of the day you end up with a very drunk priest making his way around graveyards blabbering out prayers, whilst everyone else consumes a great deal of alcohol and becomes increasingly drunk as the evening passes bye.

We both experienced such events first hand as we travelled in a bus full of many drunk people during the evening of this festival. To paint you a picture, we quietly sat down in the bus while we listened to our neighbors hurling abuse back and forth as they debated the ‘true‘ language of Moldova – Romanian or Moldovanest. We made a decision to head up to the other end of the bus for some peace and quiet before adding the English language to the debate, where we were greeted by a grandmother who gazed into the distance in her drunken state. Every now and then she gave a little wave to her grandchild, a girl no older than 5 or 6 who was being cared for by her tipsy father who had just accidently smashed his phone on the ground. At one point the lady ended up in our laps as she tried to make her way off the bus at some random stop. It really was a sad sight, especially observing an innocent girl in the moment of it all.

So whilst Easter consists of many happy moments where the family place a major focus on celebrating this event together, this custom really does end up leaving an awful lot of people in a sorry state – a very sad thing to observe first-hand.