Easter bread is baked on Holy Thursday

“They say that until Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday, the women must finish doing all the housework so as not to be punished by God,” folklorist Maria Ciocanu, the head of the ethnography section of the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History, has told Info-Prim Neo. On Holy Thursday, the people went to church and returned home with the lit candles. They made a cross above the door with the candle flame for purification. During the day the women were preoccupied with baking Easter bread and pound cakes. “The Easter bread could be also baked on Saturday, not yet on Friday. Holy Thursday was the most indicated day for baking bread,” said the ethnographer. The Easter bread with cheese is typical of Moldovans through its form and way of making. On Holy Thursday they give alms, clean up at the cemetery and start a fire in the yard ‘to warm up the dead’. “They say the dead come and stay near the house until Pentecost, when a glass of water and a piece of bread for the dead is put on a table outside,” said Maria Ciocanu. The Easter bread and eggs are the most important on Easter. The bread is a ritual one, while the eggs mean life, revival, regeneration and purification. “They usually bless red eggs in our country. The eggs were earlier painted with onion skin. The red eggs are eaten on the first day of Easter, when the people return from church,” stated the folklorist. The eggs are knocked against each other, being kept by a member of the family. The eldest one strikes them. The person whose egg does not break will live longer. The red eggs represent Jesus’ blood. A legend says that when stones were thrown at Jesus Christ, he touched them and they became red eggs. Another tradition says that Virgin Marry brought a basket with eggs at the place where Jesus was crucified and the eggs turned red from his blood. Maundy Thursday, also known as Covenant Thursday, Great and Holy Thursday, and Thursday of Mysteries, commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. The Last Supper, also called the Mystical Supper, was the last meal Jesus shared with his Twelve Apostles and disciples before his death.