Easter day is the most important holiday for Christians all around the World who cherish their

own customs, beliefs and habits that are passed on from generation to generation. The Orthodox
Christian date for Easter Sunday often occurs at a later date than the Easter date observed by
many western churches. This year they fall on the same date. Orthodox Easter preparations begin
with 40 days of strict fasting prior to Easter Day. Many Orthodox Christians attend liturgies
during the Holy Week that leads up to Easter Sunday. Then, the fasting period has ended and
meat and dairy products can be consumed.
People in Serbia who are not great believers or do not practice certain customs such as those
concerning 40 days long fasting, are mainly engaged in painting, decorating and coloring Easter
eggs. This usually happens on Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus
Christ. Although you can see a trend of relying on western habits in terms of buying and giving
chocolate eggs, people in Serbia are still used to relatively old, traditional way of practicing
Easter habits. Serbia continues to successfully resist making Easter more commercial, consisting
of greeting cards and confectionery such as chocolate Easter egg.

Easter egg is hard-boiled and dyed red to symbolize the

blood of Christ and the first painted egg is kept until the
next Easter, as guardian of the house. Color, technique
and stickers with religious motives or cartoon characters
are used today when decorating eggs. Traditional methods
of coloring eggs, using for example a wax, are still
present. With this on mind and knowing Serbs value nicely decorated eggs,
competitions are getting organized all over Serbia on Holy Saturday, with an
idea to choose the best decorated egg, and this is where children enjoy the most. In the morning,
on Easter Sunday, believers go to the church to participate in the Easter service after which the
holiday is traditionally celebrated with the family around the festive table. All people, no matter
if they are believers or not greet each other that day saying: "Hristos Vaskrse" (Christ is risen)
and "Vaistinu Vaskrse"(Truly He is risen). The first lunch after the big Easter fasting should
not only be a tasty and diverse, but it is necessary to put food on the nicely arranged table. This is
the opportunity to create a home atmosphere of closeness, belonging, and to properly mark the
resurrection of Christ. Housewives try to show of all the culinary power they have and serve
plenty of food on the beautifully decorated table. There is no particular Easter dish in Serbia, but
it is customary to prepare a lamb and pastry dough in different forms.

In addition to the various celebrations before Easter Sunday, the culmination of activities is the
egg tapping game. The owner of the last undamaged egg is considered lucky. Of course, for this
purpose there are also various competitions of which the most important is Egg-tapping World
Cup in Mokrin, where children and grown-ups can compete in the knocking of chicken eggs.
Besides the Morkin event, there are
many manifestations in Serbia
during Easter holidays like Painting
the Easter egg in Arandjelovac,
Easter in Kragujevac, Easter
Festival Days in Majdanpek, Easte
Etno Festival in Pozarevac …