Fasika

Easter is set as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The Orthodox churches, Ethiopia included, run that calculation on the Julian calendar, which now sits thirteen days behind the Gregorian one, and they hold to the rule that Easter must follow the Jewish Passover. Both conditions push the date later.

The result is that Fasika lands on the same day as Western Easter only occasionally. Most years it is one, four or five weeks after it. Because of this there is no shortcut: the date has to be computed rather than looked up on a fixed calendar, which is what the converter and calendar on this site do.

The fifty five days before Fasika are the longest and strictest fast in the Ethiopian year. No animal products at all, and for the observant no food before three in the afternoon. It is why Ethiopian cuisine has such a deep vegan repertoire: shiro, misir wat, gomen and the rest exist because the country spends around two hundred days a year fasting in one form or another.

The last week intensifies. Siklet, Good Friday, is spent in church, with prostrations, and many eat nothing at all that day.

The service on Saturday night runs until around three in the morning, when the fast breaks. Families go home and eat doro wat, and a sheep is usually slaughtered at dawn. The celebration continues through Sunday and Monday with visits between households.

Fasika is the year's main family holiday. More people travel home for it than for Genna, and in the diaspora it is the observance that holds most firmly.