Polish Easter celebrations in London

My Polish girlfriend mentioned that Easter celebrations are a pretty big deal in Poland (bigger than UK anyway).

I realise it might be a bit early to ask this, but, I was wondering if anyone knew of any Easter celebrations for Polish people in London that we could go to e.g. big parties, cultural things, or is mostly family stuff back home ?

Al.

Easter is most a religious celebration for Poles. It's also lent time so no big celebrations are practiced. Going to church and praying is what most Poles do at Easter time.

To add to hello's post. Easter Sunday breakfast is a big meal. In this house it is platefulls of ham and salad.

What's the deal with the big water fight ? She says lots of people squirt each other with water !!

Is she making it up ?

That is Wet Monday. It is not a joke and even your own family might soak you.

On Easter Saturday morning you take a basket of foods (bread, cake, salt, pepper, sausage, a lamb made out of sugar...) to the church to be blessed to ensure prosperity over the coming year. It's a really sweet tradition and it will be happening in every Polish church.

easter was a pagan practice assimilated into the christian faith.

hello wrote:
Easter is most a religious celebration for Poles. It's also lent time so no big celebrations are practiced. Going to church and praying is what most Poles do at Easter time.

Easter in not Lent - it's AFTER Lent and at Easter Christians celebrate the RESURRECTION of Christ, a most joyous event. So it's time for big celebration, prive or public.

noimigration wrote:
'easter was a pagan practice assimilated into the Christian faith'.

The resurection of Christ is a unique EVENT that Christians believe happened about 2000 years ago, so talk of assimilating some pagan practice is baseless (there was no practice of resurrecting before Christ). If Christianity took over some superficial aspects of CELEBRATING this event is no big deal.

That some pagan beliefs had (or have) some resemblance to the mystery of Resurrection is another matter, whitch rather is a credit to the intuition of those who shaped those beliefs and not something that diminishes the significance of the Christian Easter.

Just one thing I forgot to mention:

noimigration can be right to a degree in that the time chose to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ was chosen because of earlier pagan practice (as Christians do not know the precise time when Christ rose from the dead). This though I'd count among the superficial aspects of Easter - the important thing is WHAT we celebrate.