Easter in Brazil, recipes

Like in the U.S., Easter is a major religious holiday in Brazil. Even though they celebrate it at the same time as the rest of the world does, Brazilians have added rich cultural traditions to this celebration.

Good Friday

Those who observe this day which is best known as Passion Friday in Brazil, normally eat fish, particularly cod fish cakes and canjica, which is a white variety of corn and it is thoroughly cooked with condensed milk and served as a dessert.

Holy Saturday

Better known as Hallelujah Saturday, this day is marked by a tradition called the Mockery or Burning of Judas. A man-sized doll symbolizing Judas is hung, beaten and burned down at noon. Anybody can take a shot at hitting the doll with a bat or with a stick. In some communities, people attach the names of corrupt politicians, bad soccer coaches, infamous celebrities and even bad neighbors to the doll.

Easter Sunday

Churches normally celebrate this day with special elements in their worship services or masses such as plays, special songs and presentations. On the commercial side, huge chocolate Easter eggs are gifted to loved ones, specially to children. There is no egg exchange, each family member would normally enjoy one huge serving of chocolate.

Easter recipe canjica

Easter recipe Yuca-and-Cod-Fish-cakes

Huge chocolate Easter eggs

Mockery of Judas

Mockery of Judas

 

Godzilla is trending in Brazil

Godzilla #godzila was a trending topic all this week on the Brazilian Twitter. It seems that some users attributed the massive earthquake and tsunami that killed over 10,000 people to the sea monster.

The series of comments and jokes that linked Godzilla to the tragedy sparked the web sphere with comments that joined the sarcasm in either attributing the earthquake to the monster or saying he would be the next to show up in Japan. I have yet to find a tweet that strongly objects those comments.

User @ed_gomvaz posted this drawing:

User @LeandroResLac attributed this fall to the “Godzilla effect” during Carnaval

User @victorgrassi said: “to show my sympathy for Japan, I only hooked up with Japanese girls yesterday, like godzila!”

It is very heartbreaking that some people would take the time to minimize and mock Japan’s tragedy. The whole world should be joining hands to help out, but maybe wishing that is utopia.

The Godzilla jokes may have started with Twitter users allegedly ganging up on a CNN anchor who chuckled when an eye witness mentioned that his wife’s voice calmed him down in the midst of the earthquake. Watch that video here.

Users had accused CNN anchor Rosemary Church of making Godzilla references during the broadcast but the news station has denied it.