I am catholic but I don´t consider myself very religious. I do although, love traditions and Easter here in Austria is full of them!
On Good Friday all the Easter meats (ham, roast pork and roast beef) are cooked and roasted for Saturday´s feast but no meat is eaten, which is not easy to stick to with all the wonderful smells in the air! The cooked easter eggs are coloured with dye...this year we will have green and yellow ones. These are given to friends and family as a symbol for new life.
On Easter Saturday all the Easter meats are placed in a basket with sweet, white Easter bread, eggs, horse-radish and salt and pepper and taken to church to be blessed. Last year Erich took over this task and he was literally the only man in the church - the gathering and preparing of food is strictly women´s work here in central Europe (not at our house though!). After the blessing ceremony, the family sits down to eat a mixed platter of cold meats, we also eat salads and vegetables and cheeses but it´s not typical. One thing that Austrian´s love which I refuse to prepare ot eat is beef tongue!!! I almost fell over dead from shock the first time I saw the sausage like piece of meat and said to my mother in law "look at that funny sausage, it almost looks like a tongue!" and she replied "it is! A beef tongue, delicious!" and started cutting it into slices. I would rather starve than eat a tongue!
On Easter Sunday chocolates and Easter eggs are hidden in the garden for the children to find and most people then go to church. I am looking forward to spending a relaxing Easter Sunday with my family. It´s finally starting to warm up and resemble spring just a little so we will be outdoors as much as possible.
I wish you all a HAPPY EASTER, whatever you´re doing!!!
9 comments:
Thanks for this "Behind the Scenes in Austria" and Happy Easter to you too!
How wonderful! Thank you for sharing those traditions. I love traditions too!
The Latvian Easter tradition with eggs is to play a game where everyone gets an egg and then two people crack the tops against each other (usually one person holding their egg stationary and the other striking) and whoever's doesn't break wins and goes on to the next person. I haven't done that in years!
Enjoy your celebrations!
I love learning about others' traditions ... All of my great-grandparents born in Poland, so some of those customs remain in my family, including the blessing of the baskets and some of the same foods you mentioned. No tongue, however! My mother always served ham at Easter, but my husband's family serves beef tenderloin, which is just fine with me, as is the lamb cake! The kids have fun hunting eggs, albeit inside. Weather here this time of year is quite unpredictable. We had a snow day off from school March 21. Today it is expected to be 90 degrees F! (Sorry, I know no Celcius, although I can spell it!) Have a Happy Easter!
sounds wonderful - aside from the beef tongue! The only thing that sounds worse than beef tongue is chitlins - YUCK, no thanks, never!
My gran used to cook tongue all of the time and slice it up for our school sandwiches. I still shudder when I think about it - I used to feed it to the magpies in the gum tree behind the primary school. I bet they missed me when I went to high school :)
Lovely to read about all of the traditions in Austria. Europe is fascinating - in such a small area, every tiny country has its own unique traditions. Of course, Swedes don't consider themselves in europe at all! They are in "Scandinavia" - more a state of mind than a place.
Glad Påsk!
This post made me so happy! I love Easter, although I'm sad to not be spending it with my family (I'm in England studying abroad for a year). Happy Easter to you!
Sounds like some fantastic traditions. May you have a wonderful and love-filled Easter.
JTL
xxx
Happy happy happy Easter to you and to your boys! xoxo
I remember feeling so sick as child when I found out that the 'roast beef' I had eaten was really beef tongue - yuck!
Though the other Austrian traditions, especially the blessing of the Easter baskets of food, sound really lovely. Happy Easter to you, too!
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