For the Christian Liturgical Calendar, Easter is celebrated as the day that Jesus resurrected from being dead for 3 days. Many people around the world accept this as the reason for the holiday. In reality, there have been Easter festivals since before the origin of the Christian faith. The English word Easter is derived from Old English and is actually the name of an Anglo-Saxon Pagan goddess and festival of the spring equinox. Other languages have translated the word to mean “great day” and thus Latvians celebrate Lieldienas (literally great day) on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. The start of spring is marked by the vernal equinox on March 21st. The festival is often referred to as Easter, but it is actually a celebration of the days becoming longer than the nights and the start of the farming season. There are many traditions and customs that Latvians have observed for many centuries.

Easter will be on April 12th this year, but folk tradition says that Easter begins when the day is longer than the night (March 22nd). Christian Latvians will most definitely partake in the religious events, but most everyone else will celebrate in much different fashions. Customarily, people would wake up before the sunrise to wash themselves in a stream that runs east. This practice was to ensure health and beauty in the next year. Whoever is the first awake has the responsibility of waking the other people in the house by hitting them with small birch branches. This ritual is said to increase fertility and anoint the recipients with health and success. After bathing in the stream water, they would wait for the sun to come up and for the birds to begin singing. They believed the singing would protect them from sickness and evil.

When the sun has come up for the day, the next tradition is to hang from a swing to promote even more fertility. This is an archaic belief that says the swing will move until it stops by its own accord. If the swing is stopped artificially, the ritual is not valid. The swinging will help the fields to be spared from damaging wind and too much rain. Furthermore, livestock will be in good health from the swinging. The father and mother of the household are always the first to swing followed by the children.

In return for starting the swing, the girls need to repay the boys with hardboiled eggs. The egg is a symbol of new life and they are decorated by onion skins or hay. This is still the process today, although some people have adopted the use of food coloring dye to complete the decorations. Then everyone participates in egg fights to see who has the strongest egg. One person holds their egg stationary and the other person hits it with theirs. The one that has the strongest egg will consequently live the longest.

Despite religious affiliation, it is customary for Latvian to make Kulich or Paska Easter bread. The bread starts small and rises very tall to represent Christ rising from the dead. The inside is yellow and white swirled together to represent Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The bread has taken on a more secular role in modern culture as a tasty fare of the Easter season.