02 Apr
Celebrating holiday in Italy: Easter Monday
Pasquetta is also called Angel Monday and is the holiday that is celebrated after Easter Day. And when is Easter? Eheh 🙂 calculating the exact day of the Christian Easter can be confusing, let’s say that the ecclesiastical lunisolar calendar is used and is movable, as it changes from year to year. The exact date is announced to the faithful on January 6, the day of the Epiphany. This year Easter falls on Sunday, April 4 and consequently Easter Monday falls on the 5th.
Traditionally, on this day we go on a trip, have a picnic with friends or a hike out of town. Sometimes, given the “long weekend”, it is also possible a mini-vacation of a few days out of town. This year, however, Easter Monday will be a different day from those of other years, since unfortunately government restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic force us almost entirely to stay at home sweet home. It doesn’t matter because, by tradition, it always rains on Easter Monday!
The decree law, however, allows for the days of 3, 4 and 5 April to move once a day at another private home in the same region, between the hours of 5.00 and 22.00. The maximum number of people allowed is two, in addition to those already living in the home of destination. You can then gather in very small groups, cook together, eat a hearty lunch and play with canned games or maybe sleep a little, to do justice – finally – to the postprandial binge.
There is something else you can do: sport! It is in fact allowed to move by bike and on foot, even outside the municipality of residence, as long as you respect some rules:
- that the final destination coincides with that of departure (so you cannot stop in another place, but you will necessarily have to return home at the end of the activity);
- You must maintain a distance of two meters from other people;
- that it is an individual activity carried out in the open air.
If, on the other hand, you do not intend to put your nose out of the house, we offer some ideas that you can explore at the home hearth:
- A barbecue on the balcony.
- Prepare the torta pasqualina (the Easter cake), a typical dish of the day. It is usually stuffed with spinach and herbs, ricotta cheese and eggs, which must be “discovered”, as a surprise, when you cut the first slice.
- Resurrect from oblivion another traditional savory pie, which seems unknown to most: its peculiarity is not the ingredients (unfailing, of course, the eggs), but the fact that it is composed of 33 sheets of pasta, to symbolically recall the years of Jesus.
How to celebrate Easter Monday in Italy
Christmas with your folks, Easter with whoever you want, they say. Here, let’s start from this assumption: at Easter you can be with whoever you want. And also on Easter Monday, which seems to be a holiday celebrated only in Italy and in a few other parts of the world. Do not think, however, that it is simply a day added to the holiday to lengthen the broth, for the laziness of returning immediately to work after the Easter banquet. The reality is that Pasquetta has very distant roots and finds its origins even in the sacred texts: from the Gospel according to Luke, in fact, Jesus appears to the disciples on their way to Emmaus, outside Jerusalem. This is where the symbolic idea of the outing outside one’s own city on this special Monday, which became a national holiday only after the Second World War, comes from.
As we have said, in normal times, it is a good idea to have a picnic. What do you eat? You can indulge yourself: there are those who are dedicated to finish the leftovers of the previous day and those who decide to make a barbecue of meat or vegetarian. What cannot be missed is the torta pasqualina , mentioned above.
Those who instead are not dedicated to picnics, usually visit a city of art. Florence, Rome, Bologna, Naples, but also the smaller ones are literally taken by storm. Good times. But we’ll be back soon, nothing to fear!