Riga Easter.
Look, I'm trying, okay? 😆
Last Sunday was Easter. I had heard from an online acquaintance that a tradition in Lithuania is some kind of whipping each other with switches...thing. I don't recall the details and it was hearsay anyway, but I was curious if Latvia, as a neighbor, had anything similar.
I put out a post on Facebook asking about it, to which I got a very broad mix of responses. Some people saying they'd never heard of it, one person I think said it wasn't even a tradition in Lithuania, and some people saying oh, yeah, they do that here too, and in other countries as well. So it's hard to be sure. But I figured if nothing else, I should find out what was going on around the city. And sure enough, there were two cultural events on Sunday that were easy to get to and free.
So off I went. As usual, the album link.
Demonstrating their continued public transit superiority over most of America, my trip began on a lightrail tram or whatever you'd call this. The route went by the river, and then over it, past the library that I still plan to visit eventually, and over to the Imanta Cultural Center for the first event. Some kind of storytelling was going on in front of this swing, which was then opened for the public to line up and take turns. The swing is a pretty substantial Easter tradition, and the story goes that if you swing during the spring, you won't get mosquito bites during the summer.
Hearing this and reflecting on the casual kind of superstition that undergirds many traditions, I'm struck by English's *lack* of a good word that sits between superstition, belief, and custom. After all, we blow out birthday candles and "make a wish," but I don't think most people lose faith in blowing out candles if their wishes don't come true. Nor do most people make a wish, blow out the candles, and then fight to keep believing in the power of candles to grant wishes. It's a softer, almost self-aware joke of sorts, not one that's truly believed (like some people do with walking under ladders or breaking mirrors) but not one that's fallen out of our culture either. I similarly doubt that anyone in Latvia truly believes that swings affect mosquitoes, but they'll still bring it up as the origin of the tradition and still make sure to swing each year.
Whatever the case, swings weren't the only Easter tradition on display. While I have no clue what any of the stories or characters were, due to them all reasonably being presented in Latvian, these two people had a whole impressive children's theatre performance complete with audience participation. This busy table had people preparing eggs for boiling, and some traditional foods for sale (yes, that's almost a whole pig's face). The sign was rather cute and graciously provided English translations. I got pork on a stick and a potato pancake, which were quite tasty. I can't speak to how traditional building birdhouses is, but the hammering was nearly constant throughout the time I was there.
After some time watching and looking around, I got back on the tram and headed to Victory Park, where in addition to showing off their top-tier playground game, a rather large event including more swings, a choir/band, and several interesting kinds of table games was in full swing. The band also lead a traditional dance or three, and in the biggest culture shock I've felt since leaving last year, one of the stages of the dance was to run around tickling people. I feel like that would never fly in the US outside of very small "everyone knows everyone" towns where all the kids are wise to how Old Man McGillicudy *really* doesn't like to be touched.
There was something really interesting to me about the music, both here and at the prior place. The two presenters at the swing at Imanta had done some songs without accompaniment, but in addition to the a cappella songs the choir performed, they also had instruments (dulcimers or something like it, hand drums, violins, etc) for some songs. But I was struck by how almost all of them were in minor keys, and many ranged only between the root and the fifth or so of the scale.
For those without musical background, I'll try to explain a little bit. Imagine a piano. Typically the 'main' key of the piano is called Middle C. This starts the C Major scale, the traditional "do re mi fa so la ti do" sequence most people can at least recognize from The Sound of Music. The notes on a scale are broken into steps, with half steps being the immediately adjacent keys on the keyboard, and whole steps being a key apart. So from middle C to D, there's one of the black keys between - thus, it's a whole step.
A major scale is two whole steps, a half step, three whole steps, and then a half step to get back to the C (but an octave above). C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.
But these aren't the only options. Between C and D, that black key is called either C Sharp or D Flat. From C to C Sharp is a half step that is outside the major scale. Different kinds of scales exist, but the most prominent two are the simple major and minor. I'll leave it to this video to explain it more and provide an example, because this has already been way too many words and not enough notes. Or travel experiences.
So imagine now the minor scale, C-D-E flat-F-G-A-B flat-C. Many of the songs I heard being performed only used notes from C to G. This creates a sort of...tense, unresolved feeling to a lot of the music, especially when the last note of a phrase is one of the notes that makes it a minor key. Usually, in my mind, Easter and spring music is lively, upbeat, energetic to match the emerging vitality of the season. I'm curious why these songs have relatively little of that. And I can't say I know who to ask.
More fairly traditional food was available here: bbq ribs, chicken, pickled onions and cucumbers, and boiled potatoes with a garlic sauce. I watched and looked around for a bit longer, but by then I'd been out and mostly on my feet for some 4 hours and I was ready to go home. Along the way, crucially, I saw the second-floofiest Corgi I've ever seen. I grieve that I never got a picture of the floofiest.
By far the most thorough answer to my Easter Facebook post was this:
I'm surprised that America hasn't adopted the egg competition. Seems so in line with our culture.
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