Lockdown weighs heavily on Orthodox Christians during Easter

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — For Orthodox Christians, this is normally a time of reflection and communal mourning followed by joyful release, of centuries-old ceremonies steeped in symbolism and tradition.

But this year, Easter — by far the most significant religious holiday for the world’s roughly 300 million Orthodox — has essentially been cancelled.

There will be no Good Friday processions behind the flower-bedecked symbolic bier of Christ, to the haunting hymn of the Virgin Mary’s lament for the death of her son. No hugs and kisses, or joyous proclamations of “Christ is risen!” as church bells ring at midnight on Holy Saturday. No family gatherings over lamb roasted whole on a spit for an Easter lunch stretching into the soft spring evening.

As the coronavirus rampages across the globe, claiming tens of thousands of lives, governments have imposed lockdowns in a desperate bid to halt the pandemic. Businesses have been closed and church doors shut to prevent the virus's insidious spread.

For some, the restrictions during Easter are particularly tough.

“When there was freedom and you didn’t go somewhere, it didn’t bother you,” said Christina Fenesaki while shopping in Athens’ main meat market for lamb — to cook in the oven at home in the Greek capital instead of on a spit in her ancestral village. “But now that we have the restrictions, it bothers you a lot. It’s heavy.”

In Greece, where more than 90% of the population is baptized into the Orthodox Church, the government has been at pains to stress that this year's Easter cannot be normal.

It imposed a lockdown early on, and so far has managed to keep the number of deaths and critically ill people low — 105 and 69 respectively as of Thursday, among a population of nearly 11 million.

But...