Who the heck is Christos Anestis?

Tomorrow I'll be taking the day off from my regularly scheduled Sunday shift at the Circ Desk so that I can celebrate Easter in the proper fashion--i.e., with the Greeks. This year Orthodox Christians observe the Easter holiday five weeks after their Western counterparts, a result of irreconcilable differences in how the occurrence of Holy Week is calculated (the short answer: the Orthodox cannot celebrate Good Friday before the Jewish festival of Passover, since the Last Supper was believed to be the Passover seder; and Orthodox Easter may not occur during the thirteen days of discrepancy between the Julian and Gregorian calendars, since for Orthodox Christians sacred time is still computed using the unreformed calendrical system).

While we won't have the customary lamb on a spit this year, there will be lamb, and I'm sure it will be good, as my mother-in-law will be on hand to cook it, along with the myriad other culinary treasures she can conjure seemingly at will. I look forward to a lazy Sunday of eating, drinking, and just lying around and enjoying life for a rare moment. The Greeks may greet each other with the phrase "Christos anesti," or "Christ is risen" (which is often corrupted into "Christos anestis," since the conjugation of the ancient verb to get up or rise is unfamiliar to the moderns), but I fully intend to sleep like the dead tomorrow morning until roused by the smell of roasted lamb, garlic, and rosemary.

Maybe my brother-in-law and I will go fishing, as well...