Презентация на тему: "How is Easter Celebrated Around the World "

Click on a decoration to explore Easter traditions around the world.

Every year on Easter Monday in the south of France, around 10,000 people gather to watch a small army of cooks make an omelette using 15,000 eggs!
In the tiny village of Bessières in southwest France, spectators gather to watch members of the Giant Omelette Brotherhood of Bessières pour gallons of egg yolk into a large frying pan in the village square to make their world famous omelette.

After pouring the eggy mixture into the frying pan, the members of the Giant Omelette Brotherhood of Bessières use extra long baguettes to stir the mixture, adding duck fat, salt and local d’Espelette pepper to the frying pan to give the omelette extra flavour.

It takes 50 volunteers and around half an hour to cook it all!

Although the tradition has only been practised since 1973, it is said to date back to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. As the story goes, he and his soldiers were travelling and stopped at an inn nearby. Napoleon enjoyed the omelette he ate at the inn so much that he ordered the local villagers to collect enough eggs so that his entire army could enjoy an omelette the next morning. The villagers created one giant omelette for them all.

Other towns in France observe the omelette tradition in their own way too. In the Pyrenees tradition, each family prepares a large frying pan ready for an omelette made with eggs, lardons, black pudding, dry sausage, some heads of asparagus, small artichokes, parsley, salt and pepper. 

The families gather near their church where they work together to cook their omelettes. They share all of the food with their families and friends.

Semana Santa is a celebration which takes place over several days during the Easter period in Seville, Spain. Many people believe the tradition dates as far back as the 12th century.

From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, processions take over the streets of Seville and huge floats depicting parts of the Easter story are carried through the streets by local people. The floats are called 'pasos' and are carried by local volunteers called ‘costaleros’. Without them, Semana Santa could not take place.

The costaleros are made up of volunteers from each church’s brotherhood and they must wear special protective clothing to help them endure the weight of the paso. The paso looks like an ornate table with a velvet trim hiding its legs and the costaleros from view. The pasos are made of wood, which is carved into beautiful designs and covered in gold and other precious metals. Each paso can measure up to seven feet high and has statues and decorations depicting different parts of the Easter story.

Some of the pasos are over 300 years old and each one is very heavy. Local volunteers carry the paso from their churches towards the cathedral at the centre of Seville. Once the floats reach the cathedral, they pass through it briefly before turning and heading home. The distance the floats must travel by foot and their weight means that some processions can last up to 12 hours.

When the tradition of Semana Santa originally began, townspeople would take part in the processions to repent any sins they may have committed throughout the year. So that people could do this without being recognised, a special costume made up of robes, a cone shaped hat and a face veil was designed. These people are known as 'Nazarenos’.

The most important night of the Semana Santa is Holy Thursday, leading into Good Friday and is called Madrugá. The word Madrugá comes from the Spanish word ‘madrugada’ which means ‘early morning’ and the procession does indeed run until early morning. The most important part of the night is the Macarena,
which is a beautifully decorated paso holding a statue of Mary, Jesus’
mother. It is the highlight of the entire celebration and is watched
by more people than any other procession during Semana Santa.

There can be up to 3000 Nazarenos taking part in some of the bigger processions. As they can look a bit scary, many Nazarenos carry bags of sweets to give to children watching the procession so that they know they’re friendly!

“Brotherhood of Saint Rochus with velvet capirotes” by [Lobillo] is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Lots of families in Sweden have summer houses in the country and the long weekend at Easter is a chance for them to make their first visit of the year. It is a tradition to open all the windows and doors to air the summerhouse out and they are cleaned from top to bottom by the whole family.

Once this has been done, the fires are lit and friends and family arrive to begin the Easter celebrations. In a similar way to the Christmas decorations we collect and store to use each year, people in Sweden collect Easter decorations to display in their homes. These brightly coloured decorations are often home-made and many families make their own, in fact, egg painting is considered to be one of the main Easter activities.

On Maundy Thursday, Swedes gather birch twigs and put them in a glass of water. The twigs are decorated with brightly coloured feathers, hand-painted eggs and small ornaments.

You won’t find many chocolate eggs in a Swedish Easter celebration because Swedes are the world’s biggest consumer of sweets! The eggs you see at Easter in Sweden are more likely to be beautifully decorated paper or plastic eggs filled to the brim with sweet treats. While some are hung from birch twigs in the house, others are hidden around the garden for children to find during the Easter egg hunt.

According to Swedish tradition, Maundy Thursday was the day that witches flew off on their broomsticks to meet with the devil at Mount Blåkulla. The witches were said to fly back on Easter Saturday and many people light large bonfires called påskbrasor and fireworks on this day to scare them away.

On Easter Sunday in some parts of Sweden, people compete against each other in games of äggpickning. Each contestant brings a painted hardboiled egg and, in a knockout style contest, the eggs are hit against each other until one cracks. The winner keeps their opponent’s egg and moves on to the next round until there is one champion.

Children also dress up as witches or påskkäringar on Maundy Thursday. Little girls will wear rags, old clothes and headscarves and paint their cheeks a rosy red. The children fill baskets or copper kettles with the drawings and paintings they have made. They walk from house to house and exchange their gifts for sweet treats.

For the Greeks, Easter is the most important religious holiday. Traditional celebrations begin on Holy Saturday, with most people attending a church service at 9 o’clock.

Hundreds of spectators gather in the square, a safe distance from the balconies of course, to watch the tradition. Islanders believe the custom helps ward off bad spirits and spectators take pieces of the smashed pots home as good luck charms.

As soon as the church bell sounds, it’s a signal for everyone to run to the town’s main square to watch the pot throwing tradition called ‘botides’. In this Easter tradition, islanders who live in the apartments and houses surrounding the square decorate their windows and balconies with red flowers and badges and throw huge clay pots filled with water from their windows onto the streets below.

Nobody quite knows where the tradition comes from but many people believe that the botides dates back to the time of the Venetians, who ruled Corfu between the 14th and 18th centuries. To welcome the new year, the Venetians would throw out their old belongings to make way for new ones.

Another belief is that the tradition began in ancient Greece. In April, the ancient Greeks would throw out their old clay planting pots and plant seeds in new ones to mark the start of spring.