After Iranian New Year, the next set of official lockdown celebrations were the Easter weekends (first the Catholic one and then the Orthodox one). The Catholic one was pretty uneventful, as the only real Catholic in the flat is theoretically Miguel, although if you’ve met Miguel you’ll know he’s about as Catholic as Karl Marx, with the small exception that he did technically receive his first communion and is therefore a Catholic in the Portuguese church’s eyes at least.
In fact, the most Catholic I’ve ever seen him was a few weeks ago, when we were watching The Two Popes during one of our Netflix parties (more on that in a bit). He was the only one who was familiar with the protocol of anointing a pope and how they blow black or white smoke out of the Vatican when a new pope is chosen. Apparently it’s a big deal, and he seemed to think that was common knowledge around the world, although Salma and I assured him we knew nothing about it.
The greatest thing about Catholic Easter was that our amazing Salma set up an Easter Egg hunt around the flat for Miguel and me. She left clues that sent us around the flat looking for more clues which eventually led to a prize of a whole massive chocolate egg each, as well as a whole massive bowl full of mini chocolate eggs. This obviously got me extremely excited and running about the flat like an over-zealous three-year-old, getting mildly jealous when Miguel would find the next clue instead of me. And the chocolate eggs, which would’ve been enough to see a small family through the whole lockdown, were also devoured (mainly by me) over the course of the next few days. I think that week alone I must’ve put on about 5 kilos.
The greatest ‘adventure’ of that weekend, however, was on that Saturday night. In Serbian Orthodox religion, as in all of Christianity, the Sunday before Easter is celebrated as Palm Sunday (or ‘Flowering Sunday’ as we call it in Serbian). It symbolises the day that Jesus rode back into Jerusalem. The saying goes that people waited for him at the gates of Jerusalem with flowers and palm leaves to throw at his feet. It’s an important celebration for all Christians, but for me I love it because of one particular tradition, celebrated mainly in Bosnia.
The Saturday before Palm Sunday we go out and pick a selection of beautiful flowers and leave them overnight in a basin of water. On Palm Sunday morning we then wash our faces with this flowery water, which is supposed to make us even more healthy and beautiful, and cleanse us ahead of this important week. You may doubt the power of this tradition, but just take a look at how youthful all the women on my mum’s side of the family are and you might become a convert.
On more than a few occasions I have celebrated Easter in Serbia or in Grahovo in the Bosnian mountains, where flora and fauna are plentiful. You just need to step outside the house and you are surrounded by a rainbow of flowers of all shapes and sizes. In our super residential and ultra not-green urban area of South West London, however, it was a challenge to put together a few blades of grass.
On top of that, the park close to our house was closed due to Covid, and we were in peak lockdown, which meant we weren’t supposed to be leaving the house unless it was absolutely essential. I of course deemed this outing to fall under that category, but I’m not sure the local authorities would agree.
I was determined that Covid would not ruin my celebrations and so I devised a plan. We would wait until late at night when no one could see us, and then we would sneak out in the darkness and subtly steal flowers from our neighbours (or at least those who had any- and finding them was a challenge in itself). Miguel would obviously accompany me on this, he had no choice in the matter.
Unfortunately, at the time of making the plan I had forgotten that our Triple D cocktail dinner had been moved from Friday to Saturday that week because of Salma’s work obligations. What this meant was that we would be sneaking out past midnight after a considerable amount and variety of cocktails, making the whole clandestine operation a lot less subtle than we’d hoped.
Drunken Maja also thought it would be nice to share “operation flower steal” with my mum, as a way to demonstrate my dedication to Serbian traditions. Instead, she obviously just freaked out at the ‘illegality’ of the whole procedure and spent the whole time texting me to make sure we don’t get in trouble with the police.
Action shot. Miguel strategically wore a hoody to disguise himself
In my intoxicated state this made me even more paranoid. Every time I would see a small bunch of flowers I would wobble over cautiously, looking left and right the whole time, pause for a few seconds just to make sure no one was coming, quickly pick one or two flowers and then power walk/stumble away as fast as I could. In retrospect it was probably the most dodgy and incriminating behaviour a policeman could’ve seen on the streets of London that night. Luckily for us we didn’t come across any. Can you imagine me trying to explain that I am out stealing my neighbours’ flowers while dressed up and drunk at 1 o clock in the morning in order to be able to cleanse my face with them the following morning?!
Despite the intoxication and many other hurdles we had to overcome (you would be surprised at how many of my middle-aged, curtain-less, ground floor neighbours were awake at that time of night) we got together a few flowers. Very small flowers and a very small selection (certainly the most modest I’ve ever had), but a collection all the same, which I valued even more the following morning knowing what we had to go through to get it.
15 minutes in I was beginning to lose hope…
Orthodox Easter was a tough one for all of us this year as it was the first one without baba Bosa, so more than a few tears were shed on that Sunday and it was probably one of my lowest points of lockdown. It’s always been an important one for my family and we’ve always spent it together, mainly united by her as our alma mater.
Luckily my amazing mum defied the corona odds and still coloured us eggs so we had those to enjoy (and they are still there untouched in the bowl; I can’t bring myself to get rid of them!).
Mommas eggs- Instagram worthy
She also used dad’s “Japanese maple leaf” to decorate some of them so we had a few ‘marijuana eggs’ which now seem to be becoming a Milosavljevic family tradition. My mother, of course, refuses to see the resemblance (you can be the judge) and my father is apparently pleading the fifth, but my sister and I find it very suspicious.
Japanese maple my ass
All in all, an emotional and very unique Easter celebration this year, but I still consider myself extremely lucky to have my amazing family and friends to support me even in these unusual circumstances 😊