It’s the Thursday before Easter, also known as the Great Thursday or the Thursday of Sufferings (known in English as the Maundy Thursday, Holy Thursday or even Sheer Thursday) when the orthodox-Christians from Romania celebrate four events: the washing of the Disciples’ feet, the Holy Eucharist and the Last Supper, Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Judas’ betrayal.
It’s the day when all graves and the doors of Heaven open and let the dead return home, to spend Easter with their families. Don’t imagine a Halloween-type of celebration, there’s nothing scary about this belief. The return of the dead doesn’t bring evil, the spirits are driven by love of Christ and family rather than by a black desire of haunting the living. It’s believed that they don’t stay indoors, but on the roofs or in the yards so in many regions in Romania people light fires to give them light and to keep them warm.
In Muntenia where I grew up we don’t light fires, but we light candles and we prepare drinks and food for the dead. The food is mostly coliva and colaci. Coliva is a type of cake made of boiled wheat, sweetened with sugar and decorated with nuts and sometimes bonbons. It represents the body of the dead that has to be buried first to come back to life, pretty much as the grain is buried into the ground to grow into a new plant.
image courtesy Alina Dosan
Colaci are nothing else but bread. They can have different shapes and sizes, depending on the region where they are made, but as a general rule, the “colaci” made for the dead are decorated with the holy cross. My grandma used to prepare these colaci early in the morning, to be ready for the evening Mass in the church.
I remember the last time I saw my grandma alive – it was the Holy Week in 2003. The Great Thursday found us preparing colaci and cozonaci and dyeing eggs. My grandmother was ill and weak, but she wouldn’t rest. She had to spend that Thursday as she used to, as she believed to be right in front of God. We usually had only red eggs for Easter, but that year I bought other colors too and we ended up having a rainbow on our table.
I remember being there with my mother and her fiance and that is the last real family feeling I have from home. Each of us was busy doing something: my grandfather prepared a traditional lamb soup, my mother cleaned up the house, her fiance fixed things in the garden, my grandmother made colaci and cozonaci and I dyed eggs.
We were happy. Everything was right, as it was supposed to be: a beautiful spring day, blessed by God, a memory I cherish in my heart forever. My grandma lived another year, till March 2004, when she died peacefully. I was told that the whole village came to see her on her last trip. She was loved by many, for her kindness, for her gentleness, for the way she lived her life – an inspiration to us all.
Aside the somehow macabre superstition about the return of the dead, the Great Thursday is a time of intense preparations for the Easter fiest. It’s believed that those who sleep in the Great Thursday will be lazy the whole year. Women and girls particularly should not sleep, for if they do Joimarita will come to put a spell on their hands, a spell that will make the women unable of working the whole year. So to keep “awake” people work this Thursday, preparing all they need for Easter: cleaning the house, preparing the traditional “Cozonaci,” dyeing eggs. All is allowed, except doing laundry, because Romanians believe that the dirty water will go to the dead.
So tomorrow I’ll be doing at least some of the things I used to do back home: I’ll go shopping for Easter, I’ll dye eggs and I’ll finish cleaning the house – of course I will not do all these things alone, but as you imagine, many little things will keep me busy tomorrow, so there will be no entry here.
But I have a gift for you: a cozonaci recipe courtesy to Netcook.com:
2 lbs. (1 kg.) flour
10 oz. (300g) sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
6 eggs
2 oz. (50g) yeast
7 oz. (200g) butter
2 Tbls. oil
vanilla stick
salt
egg for washing the dough
grease for the pansMake a started from yeast and a teaspoon of sugar. Mix until the consistency of sour cream, add 2-3 Tablespoons tepid milk and a little flour. Mix well. Sprinkle some flour on top, cover, and let sit in a warm place to rise. Boil the milk with the vanilla stick (cut in very small pieces) and leave it on the side of the range, covered, to keep warm.
Mix the yolks with the sugar and salt, then slowly pour the tepid milk, stirring continuously. Place the risen starter in a large bowl and pour, stirring continuously, the yolk-milk mixture and some flour, a little at a time. Then add 3 whipped egg whites. When you finish this step, start kneading.
Knead, adding melted butter combined with oil, a little at a time, until the dough starts to easily come off your palms. Cover with a cloth and then something thicker (like a blanket). Leave in a warm place to triple in bulk. If during kneading the dough seems too hard, you may add a little milk. If, on the contrary, the dough seems too soft, you may add a little flour.When the dough has risen well, take a piece of it, place on the floured work surface, give it the desired shape (round, oval, braided, etc.) and place in the baking pan previously greased with butter. Let rise some more in the pan in a warm place.
Wash with egg and bake at medium heat. Take out of the pan as soon as it is done, place on a cloth and let cool.
