How does the large Buksit family from the Braslav region celebrate Catholic Easter?

 The Bukis family from the Braslav region is deeply religious, striving to live according to God’s commandments and has preserved the Christian traditions of the Catholic Church to this day.

Three generations on the female side live together in a small apartment in the agricultural town of Akhremovtsy. The eldest is Veslava Baltrukovich, her daughter Olga and son-in-law Gennady, their five children: Stanislav, Wanda, Marjan, Tadeusz and Michalina. All names were chosen according to Christmastide, the children were baptized on the Feast of Divine Mercy. – How are you preparing for Easter? – I ask the young hostess. “We put things in order in the yard and in the house a long time ago,” Olga noted. – Now we cleanse the souls. For this purpose, everyone, except the youngest, confessed. Participated in St. imshe on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Saturday. According to tradition, we always bake a huge holiday cake and paint eggs. You need 50-60 of them, so that there is enough for yourself, for guests, for giving gifts to people you meet, for children to play with. For coloring we use onion peels and paint. Yellow, blue, green are for games, and red are for the festive table. On Saturday, the festive meal - pie, eggs, smoked meat, sausage, apples (everything must be homemade) - is consecrated in the church. On the basket with food we put an Easter attribute - a hare, which Wanda sewed for the holiday. Be sure to take home a coal from the blessed fire and store it until next Easter. In the time of our great-grandmother, believers lit a candle from the fire, brought it home in silence and lit a torch in the stove. Now there are no torches or stoves, so we carry a coal, which we perceive as a symbol of the eternity of life. On Sunday, at the common table, the grandmother usually tells the children a story that she heard from her grandmother, namely why there should be a blessed red egg on the table, which became so in the hands of Magdalena at the site of Christ’s crucifixion. Also on Sunday we go to witchcraft, congratulate our Catholic neighbors on the Resurrection of Christ, and meanwhile the children roll eggs at a distance. According to Olga, all familiar families observe the basic customs. Each holiday has its own traditions. But there are some things that are common to everyone. In the Bukis family, this is a mandatory dinner together, when you can look into each other’s eyes, share joys, talk about worries, hopes, think about tomorrow together, wish each other health and peace. Photo courtesy of the BUKIS family.