Spring has arrived in Macedonia with its warm days and but still cool nights. I am told that this spring has been rainier than those of the last few years, so that maybe there won’t be too many waterless days this summer. Most Probistpians are outside now, tending their flower gardens and getting the soil ready for planting vegetables. The trimmed grape vines and fruit trees are budding. Lettuce is already available. Macedonians love the land and make use of every square meter to grow something, whether it be something to eat or something to beautify their surroundings.
Orthodox Easter was celebrated last weekend here in the Balkans. It is perhaps the most important holiday of the year. On Great Thursday (Holy Thursday), before the sun rises, families will dye three eggs the color red. This I was told, represents the Holy Trinity and the color red represents the blood of Christ. Later in the day, the eggs are gently rubbed across the heads of the children (I am not sure of the significance of this ritual). Nobody went to work on Great Friday (Good Friday). On Great Saturday (Holy Saturday), many families decorated eggs. Unlike those colored pills that you added to vinegar water that I used as a child, the dyes used here in Macedonia produced dark reds and blues and greens that gave the eggs deep rich colors.
At 11:00 PM on the eve of The Great Day (Easter) I went with Jasmina (my Macedonian tutor and friend) to the local church and attended a ceremony in which all of the parishioners with lighted candles, a ringing church bell, and led by chanting priests, walked around the church three times before the midnight hour. There was a great turnout of attendees and I saw many of the students from the Nicola Karev School. Most people lit candles for their family members and friends, and with the weather being temperate, it was a nice ceremony.
On The Great Day (Easter Sunday), children receive the decorated eggs and go about playing a game whereby two of them would lightly smack two eggs together. The one whose egg cracked would have to give it to the one whose egg remained uncracked. Using a decorated wooden egg to enhance one’s collection is not an uncommon practice and individuals with many eggs are always under suspicion for having employed such a tactic. Alexandra, Jasmina, and children from school gave me beautifully decorated eggs that I had to reluctantly destroy and turn into egg salad (a classic riches to rags story). As with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny doesn’t work in Macedonia. There are no candy-filled Easter baskets hiding somewhere to be found. Peeps, jelly beans, and chocolate bunnies have not yet challenged the ordinary plain white egg for dominance in the Easter Sunday diet of Macedonia’s children.
One other very significant event took place in Probistip last week. One of the first things that a visitor to most municipalities throughout the country notices is the poor condition of the trash dumpsters which residents use to get rid of their household garbage. Invariably they are missing the top enclosure which enables the local homeless cat and dog population to feast on discarded foodstuffs (and in the process litter the surrounding grounds). They are wheel-less, rusted and an eyesore in the otherwise meticulously clean communities. Well now Probistip can lay claim to the title of “A Town That Has Only New Dumpsters”. Every old and somewhat useless dumpster was replaced with a brand new fully operable state of the art trash depository. While I do wonder where the homeless animals are dining, I have noticed the litterlessness of the areas where the dumpsters are located.
Oh, and by the way, my wife arrived from Massachusetts for a four-week visit.
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