20 May 2013. It’s STILL the Easter Season!

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The Easter season stretches on to Pentecost, which falls on 23 June this year. That means that we have another month left in the festal time… hey, if we keep the Easter Lent for all forty days, then, it stands to reason that we should keep all fifty days of the Easter feast. God did NOT intend us to walk about with long faces and be insufferable misery-guts to all about us. Christ is risen! That’s what our religion is all about… not rules… not crusades… not marches… not politics… but Christ is Risen! It was good enough for baba and dede, it’s good enough for me…

Христосъ воскресе!

Воистинну воскресе!

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19 May 2013. A Picture IS Worth a Thousand Words… Here’s What Radonitsa’s All About

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During the Easter season, real Orthodox go out to the cemeteries and visit the graves of their loved ones. We tend the graves and lay symbolic offerings of food and flowers on them (often, Easter eggs). However, on Easter and during Bright Week, we can’t offer Pannikhida, the first opportunity is the first Monday after Bright Week. Since many monasteries keep Monday as a day of abstinence, the custom has arisen of celebrating Radonitsa (Day of Rejoicing) on the Second Tuesday after Easter. Mind you, you can lay offerings on a grave on Easter and Bright Week (we certainly did), but you can’t offer Pannikhida. In the above image, people in Minsk are visiting family graves, offering a toast, and giving due respect. Radonitsa isn’t “canonical”… it’s a “people’s feast”… the Church didn’t decree it, the people just did it. Now, if some would just get their long noses out of books…

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11 May 2013. Ura! It’s Victory Day! The Fireworks in Moscow…

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Every year, there’s fireworks for Victory Day… and this year was no exception. Here are three images of the fireworks from Moscow…

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11 May 2013. A Picture IS Worth a Thousand Words… “The March of the Immortal Regiment” on Victory Day

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The above image shows young people carrying placards with the portraits of their grandparents who took part in the VOV. It’s called the “March of the Immortal Regiment, and it’s a new aspect of Victory Day… it’s become very popular, very fast. That’s because it’s not “glorifying war”… it’s rendering honour to one’s elders… that hasn’t gone out of style in Russia. Do note that many of the marchers are wearing Red Army pilotkas. Most of the sentiment for the restoration of the USSR in one form or another is found in the working class and peasantry, that is, amongst common people. VVP‘s responded to that… shall the noxious legacy of Yeltsin be undone in its entirety (let the oligarchs go to New York with their looted boodle… they’ll fit right in with the Rockefellers and Whitneys)? God willing it shall…

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