Russian Easter

Winner: Gold for Best Love Story 2024 Solas Awards

I didn’t realize how unusual my background was until I had to explain Russian Easter to my sweetheart, Harold, a “real” American, as in my youth I considered people who hadn’t grown up in immigrant families such as my own. Why was it on a different day than American Easter? Why was it the most important celebration of our year, more important even than Christmas? In the days before Google and Wikipedia, explaining was no easy task.

The questions began when I asked Harold to come to San Francisco to meet my family. While there, we would attend Russian Easter celebrations.

“Wow,” Harold marveled, as we approached the Russian Orthodox cathedral on Geary Street, “I feel like we took a wrong turn and ended up in Moscow.”

The Holy Virgin Cathedral, also known as the Joy of All Who Sorrow—a name that to me always seemed more than a little ironic—is the largest of the six Russian Orthodox cathedrals outside Russia. To Harold’s point, the building’s architecture leaves no doubt as to its origins. Five onion domes crown the towering edifice, each covered in 24-carat gold leaf and topped with a cross. More mosaics adorn the building’s façade, the top half featuring six long, narrow renderings of holy men. Over the church entrance, a seventh depicts the Virgin Mary surrounded by angels.

As Harold was about to find out, the interior of the cathedral was no less impressive. As we stepped inside, his eyes darted from icons to religious paintings to more mosaics. Overhead, a large chandelier illuminated the ornate space with a subdued glow.

The cathedral had filled up early with the faithful. The marginally faithful—those who, like us, went to church only on Christmas and Easter—arrived around 11:30. We looked forward to the service, but had no desire to stand from nine o’clock to two in the morning, the length of the full, seemingly interminable service. Unlike in most of my non-Russian friends’ churches, in ours there is no sitting.

My brother, Alex, had got candles for everyone. At midnight the entire congregation would take to the street, filling it with candlelight. The reason for heading outside was to allow Christ to arise in privacy. Until the church emptied, he waited patiently in an elaborate casket in front of the main altar. To ensure no one woke him early, an honor guard of soldiers and scouts protected the casket, a role I had once performed.

When the time came, a procession began leaving the church, led by a small man with big presence and a long white beard. Dressed in flowing gold robes, he wore an elaborate jeweled miter on his head, carried a gold prayer book in one hand, and swung an incense lamp from the other. All the while, his deep bass voice intoned a sacred chant.

The rest of the procession followed, carrying icons and banners and swinging more incense. Wizened old believers who had spent their lives frequenting the cathedral, like the old family friends of my childhood, cradled objects of devotion in their hands. The choir brought up the rear, including my cousin Lena and her husband Vitja.

As the procession finished its circumnavigation of the church, the Archbishop stood before the front doors, which had been closed.

“Hristos voskrese!” (“Christ has risen!”), he proclaimed.

 “Vo istinu voskrese!” (“Indeed he has risen!”), we called back.

The choir outside was joined by one inside, their joyous, melodic voices projected over loudspeakers. The whole city must have heard the music, one of the most beautiful pieces I know, the hymn in celebration of Christ’s rebirth, “Hristos voskrese iz mertvih” (“Christ rises from the dead”). No matter that I couldn’t understand the words, since it was sung not in Russian but in the old Church Slavonic still used in the Orthodox service. The hymn was sung again and again, the Archbishop repeating his blessing during the pauses. Eventually, he triumphantly re-entered the cathedral, which was now empty of the casket but filled with the Holy Spirit.

The service continued inside, and we found ourselves surrounded by friends. What came next was a ritual beloved by teenage boys but of which young women were less fond: the greeting with three kisses, which started on Easter and would continue for forty days.

My uncle Shura emerged from the congregation and looked Harold up and down. At 6’2” this family patriarch, the oldest of my father’s brothers, had always been the tallest and most important man in the room. I was astonished as he broke into an enormous grin, gave Harold a bear hug, and kissed him three times.

After the ceremony concluded, we headed home. The table was already set for the stream of people that would wander in at all hours from churches all over the city, including many of my childhood friends. They got a kick out of toasting Harold with the vodka shots that had to be downed—bottoms up!—every time someone proposed a new toast.

The partying continued until four in the morning, wrapping up only so the revelers could get some rest before still more celebrations the next day.

On Easter Sunday the women stay home, filling tables with all sorts of traditional treats: Easter eggs; kulich, the Easter cake; pasha, a sweet cheese pyramid; zakuski, an assortment of cold hors d'oeuvres, entrées, and snacks; and an endless flow of vodka. The men travel from house to house, eating and drinking and getting progressively more rambunctious over the course of the day.

Harold stayed with me, soaking in the stories that friends and family were more than happy to share when prompted by his questions. And while the air was festive, the stories often were not. We heard tales of war and displacement, of families torn apart, of lives spent in a kaleidoscope of places: Russia, Ukraine, the Don, Siberia, Gallipoli, Shanghai, Harbin, Japan, Serbia, Berlin, Trieste, Paris, Argentina, Venezuela, Australia, Toronto, and more. We heard one story about indentured servitude in Canada; another about fleeing Berlin with the Belgrade Ballet Company in World War II. We heard countless others.

For Harold, it was the beginning of years of fascination. For me, it was a new way to see what seemed like nothing more than cause for embarrassment when I was a child, when I desired nothing more than to be a “real” American.

Harold always helped me see my heritage differently, to value the depth of those connections to a lost past.