Easter Tradition

Still stuffed with the filling food Carinthians traditionally eat at Easter, I tiredly look back at a typical Easter weekend full of relatives visiting, drinking and eating. My mother prepared the "Osterjause", a cold dinner, for all of us, which means that there were up to twenty one persons eating at a time. Luckily, we've got a large balcony with a huge dining table that creaked under the weight of the many plates.

The traditional Carinthian Easter meal consists of ham, sausages, lots of freshly ground horseradish (even the strongest and proudest men have to cry), eggs, egg cream, red beet sauce and white, sweet bread with raisins, cinnamon and sugar in it. This bread is called “Kärntner Reindling” or in my regional dialect “Woazas”.

As Easter is the most important Catholic holiday, Catholics traditionally keep to a diet for forty days before eating as much as possible of the Easter meal. Traditions go further and so we usually eat  veggies on Maundy Thursday and fish on Good Friday. On Saturday morning there is a mass where you bless the food you are going to eat. Midday indicates the end of Lent in our family (despite the fact that we are not that strict that we would give something up for Lent) and the whole family, many relatives from all over Austria included, eat as if there was no tomorrow. In the afternoon, everyone stays for cake and coffee and in the evening we all eat the Easter meal once again, for the last time this year.
We then sit together, drink and have fun until dawn breaks. On Sunday morning all the kids, still including me ;), search for the sweets, eggs and little presents that were hidden by the parents. We all - guess what - eat and continue to drink. A cheer for Austria!

That's our family's tradition. Of course I know that it differs from family to family, village to village, from valley to valley, whatever. I definitely like it the way it is....