My special tradition: dying eggs for Easter

Dying eggs for Easter is an old pagan tradition, later co-opted by the Orthodox Christian Church, to celebrate the start of spring, symbolising nature's rebirth (resurrection, if you will) in the Northern Hemisphere after the long winter.

I'm hardly religious but this is the Easter tradition I keep as it's a symbol and reminder of my own rebirth of sorts.

I can say that I had a pretty comfortable life before I left Australia in 2001. I had a job, lots of friends, my own house and car, plenty of savings... all set. Just that I was in a rut of sorts. I had qualifications for languages but I found that there was very little demand for these skills in Australia at the time. Plus I always wanted to live overseas, something that had been in the plans a few years beforehand but blinding love (isn't it always the case) and the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (well, look at my languages) got in the way. As they say, life is what happens when you're making plans. However, an opportunity did eventually come up and I was determined to take it with both hands this time. Nothing was going to stop me this time.

But there was another underlying motive to pick up stumps and try it out elsewhere – to prove that I can do things independently.

You see, my life in Australia was comfy thanks mainly to a lot of family assistance and having the luxury of a support network that comes from being a local and knowing people from childhood and school. Too easy! So it wasn't that I needed a challenge, I craved one.

And so I headed out of the country in 2001... and boy was it a baptism of fire. I thought I had been such an 'adult' before I left Australia but really I had very little idea of what to do. I certainly hadn't been prepared for a truly independent life.

After many, many trials, tribulations and setbacks (including 9/11), nine months after I had left Australia and was now in London, UK, it was Easter. Normally my mother would dye Easter eggs for me, but she was 10,000 miles away. OK, so if I wanted to have dyed Easter eggs, I'll have to do it myself, so I made it a mission to achieve this.

First stop was to buy the dye, which was easy as there was a Macedonian shop in Shepherd's Bush that I regularly would go to that had packets of dye available. That's the first item ticked off the list. Then I bought the eggs. I had some old newspaper (a Macedonian one, no less) ready for the eggs to dry on, and had the right type of vinegar as per the instructions on the dye packet (so that's why it always smelled of vinegar when my grandmother dyed the eggs). Problem... what was I supposed to do with the dye-red residue water? It's leaves a colour stain... that's when I realised why the sink in my grandparents' house had this red hue to it. I ended up pouring the water into jar and emptying its reddish contents in the garden.

In the end I dyed 12 eggs, all red. I felt so accomplished. I did it all myself! 

Mind you, they didn't look as good as my mother's eggs. Hers always had this glossy shine to them while mine looked so dull. Had I not done them properly? Ah, who cares. What mattered is that I had dyed eggs. I did it and all on my own!

The tradition on Easter Sunday is then to have a competition cracking eggs with others. Whoever's egg does not crack is declared the winner and has good luck for the year until next Easter. Unfortunately, I was not the winner that Easter, though I could have done with some luck then. I did keep one egg though "for the house", which is a Macedonian tradition. This egg remains in a visible place in the house, again for good luck and to ward off bad spirits, only to be replaced with a new egg come next Easter. Once the old egg has clocked up its year, I then go to a nearby river, make a wish and throw the egg into the running water. So if by chance you see a reddish egg bobbing in a canal in London, that could be mine.

When my parents called from Australia to wish me a happy Easter with the tradition Orthodox Christian greeting "Christ has risen", to which the response is "he truly has risen", I couldn't wait to tell them of my egg dying success. I could hear a slight despondency in my mother's voice. Egg dying had been "her" job and so for yet another task she had become redundant for me. She asked how the eggs turned out on my first go.
- "Well, they weren't as shiny as yours, mum"
- "Didn't you rub the eggs gently with olive oil?"
- "Oh, is that what you're supposed to do."
Yes, that's the trick – olive oil. Since then I have always had the greasy stuff ready to give those eggs the shine they deserve.

Pretty much every year since, except the time I was undergoing chemo treatment, I have dyed eggs as a yearly reminder of being independent. The great thing is that by not being religious, and considering my household is also part-Jewish (culturally), I'm not tied to any specific dates. Tradition dictates that the eggs should be dyed at dawn on the Thursday before Easter, but due to travel or other circumstances, I have had times when I've dyed the eggs even weeks after Easter. So long as they're done sometime around April/May, that's fine with me.

So here are my eggs for 2025. What do you think? I've gone for the traditional red this year, and the dye is from the same Macedonian brand that I used in my first go in 2002. I've done various colours in the past. 2020 was yellow and green – how dinky-di Aussie of me! A decade ago I went overboard and dyed about 3 dozen eggs in the colours of the rainbow. There's usually photographic evidence too! If it's not on the socials, did it ever really happen?

By the way, this year is a rare one in that Orthodox Easter (as per the Julian Calendar) is on at the same time as Gregorian-calendar Easter. Now this might be an unpopular opinion but I believe it's time to let go and for all Orthodox Churches move two weeks into the present and fully adopt the Gregorian Calendar. I say unpopular because when talking with Nicoleta, a delightful Romanian woman who works at my local supermarket, she said it’s been a blood bath with the requests for time off during the Easter weekend this year. When the Easters are on different dates, Nicoleta and many other Orthodox Christians easily get the dates off for what for them is the most important day on the religious calendar, whenever Orthodox Easter is on at its usual different date.

How about some Easter songs...

First up, from Macedonia it's Džoksi with this 1994 hit 'Na Veligden' (At Easter). This is the ultimate Easter pop song played on near constant repeat in the lead-up to Easter in Macedonia, much like your usual Christmas pop songs (looking at you Mimi!)

Djordje Vasić, aka Džoksi, was first the lead singer for the Macedonian rock bands Makakus (1978-1985) and Moral (1986), and then went solo in late 1980s going by the stage name Gina Papas Džoksi. "Gina Pappas" comes from the Greek name of Džoksi's ethnic Macedonian mother, who was born in a village near Karakamen (now Vermio) mountain next to Negush, now Naousa in Greece.

The next Easter song is from Serbia. Here's one of the legends of Serbian folk song, the unsinkable Vera Matović whose been delighting her core provincial Serbian (and Yugoslav) fan base since the 1970s. Matović first sang this song 'Uskrs je' (It's Easter) at the annual Šumadijski Sabor festival of newly-composed folk songs in 1992, winning the jury prize. As she sings: "It's Easter and my village is celebrating it without me; my village that has forgotten me"...

Matović firmly believes that aging with grace is for the weak (she's in her late 70s now), and makes no apologies for her unabashedly brash look, taking her reputation as the byword for 'provincialism' as a badge of honour. Consider her to be a Serbian Dolly Parton of sorts. Matović's long and very lucrative career has funded her huge villa in the most expensive suburb of Belgrade, and to the surprise of many given her public image, Matović is an art connoisseur and has in her possession of the one of the largest collections of Serbian art and paintings!

I'd like to wish everyone who's celebrating a happy Easter!
Среќен Велигден! 
Честит Великден!
Срећан Ускрс!
Sretan Uskrs!
‍С Пасхой!
Καλό Πάσχα!