Eat, drink and be merry, for He has conquered Death!

The Rimsky-Korsakov household has been a veritable hive of activity since last week. Although the family has a cook, Nadezhda Nikolaeva, and her sixteen-year-old daughter, also Nadezhda, have been showing me how to prepare pashka and kulich in preparation for the Resurrection day feast. Pashka is a rich sweet cheese spread shaped into a triangular block, and decorated with the cyrillic letters XB for "Christos voskres"; Christ is Risen, in dried fruit, and the mixture contains crushed nuts, dried fruits, and a little essence of vanilla. The kulich is a nutty fruitcake, which we bake in a tall, cylindrical baking tin (Nadezhda refers to it as the "Priest's hat" tin!). Once it is baked, we drizzle it with white frosting, and Nadezhda Nikolaeva adds the lettering to it. Although, at sixteen years old, Nadezhda is perhaps a little old to be making easter eggs, for the benefit of their guest, the family show me how to boil silk scraps to colour eggs, explaining the importance of easter eggs in Russian culture; the more superstitious, and many of the older generation believe that the eggs possess magical powers to ward off goblins and demons, and often the peasant folk will bury an easter egg in the foundations of a new house to ensure prosperity. On the Thursday before the Great and Holy Friday, the family's priest, Father Bakhtin visits the family to bless the Kulich and very kindly spends some time explaining the ritual of the all-night vigil and the midnight mass to me. Saturday is a day of fasting (not an easy thing for somebody like me who loves her food!), with an afternoon nap in anticipation of the midnight mass. When we leave the family house the whole Rimsky-Korsakov tribe is in attendance. Mikhail and his wife with their baby, Sofia and her husband, Andrei, looking brisk and efficient in his military uniform, Vladimir and Nadezhda, Nadezhda's governess, Madame Moiseyeva, the cook, and two maids step into the darkened streets with us. It's a little unnerving passing the great houses with their darkened windows, and the church, as we enter, is pitchy dark. With this unlit candle in my hand, I really need the guiding hands of the family as the usher directs us. According to the symbology that I was taught, the darkened church is the representation of the world without hope, before Christ's redeeming work. The Orthodox church is very different from anything I have known elsewhere; Madame Rimskaya-Korsakova has lent me a headscarf, and warned me that we will spend most of the next six hours standing in segregation, for the duration of the midnight vigil. I have to remember to cross myself "backwards" if I am not to stand out! The moment is nothing less than magical! I hear distant church bells ringing for the first time in the silent darkness, then, as the bells of this church begin to sound, everyone lights their candles. Those who don't have a match, or a tinderbox, light from the candles of their friends and neighbours, and from the front of the church, the priests lead the chant, "O Come and Worship". I really feel a new hope, and a great thankfulness to God. Rather than an abc transcription, I am including a direct link to the PDF for the chant "Arise O God and judge the Earth.