4.30 A.M. Good Friday Tradition

My bed didn’t let me go. Its comfort held me tight whenever I struggled opening my eyes. If only the night was longer, I would have given up and continued on sleeping. It was 4 AM in the morning and I heard my inner voice shouting, “wake up!” which followed by “doh!”. I took 15 minutes to be fully awake and forced myself to go to the bathroom. Yes, it was Good Friday and I had to join morning worship in the neighborhood at 4.30 AM.

Everything was dark and I covered my upper body with my mom’s handmade batik scarf since it was rather cold while holding a candle. Together with my parents I sat down on the corner waiting for other people to come. Sitting on the dark, I sought for frogs to pass the time. Fortunately I didn’t see any around.


After waiting for about 15 minutes – yeah many people were late – the worship began. We all lit the candles and their flame danced gracefully accentuating the dark. A hundred people worshiped together.


Our Good Friday tradition has been living amongst us for years. Each year you can see how people put efforts for this. We are asked to bring mat in case there’s no enough space for sitting. I don’t know if people take a shower before attending the worship but it’s nice to see how they bring themselves and make it work each year.

The sun rose and its warmth caressed our skin when the worship was finally finished. The tea was served together with marble cakes. 



While sipping tea, some teenagers brought us take-home-breakfast. The breakfast was semur telur. The word semur is derived from Dutch word “smoor” which means stewing. Telur is “egg”. This egg was combined with spicy bihun (rice vermicelli), stir-fried tempeh, and kerupuk.



Breakfast wasn’t the only thing we brought home. Each of us received an Easter egg as well. No decorative eggs this year but it doesn't mean we give thank less.


That’s my Good Friday. How was yours? Do you also have a tradition? What is it? That would be nice to know how other people from other culture live the Good Friday.

This is all for now. Thank you for your visit. Have a nice Sunday and Happy Easter!

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3 Comments

  1. What a wonderful way to celebrate Easter, it's worth enough to get up early to feel this spirit together with family and neighbours - and finalising the worship with a breakfast is a good idea as well. My tradition of Easter Sunday goes back to the fading memories of my childhood: my mother always prepare us a basket full of small chocolate eggs, real decorated eggs (we decorated them themselves some days before) and some chocolate bunny,all nicely put on fresh herbs inside the basket..but this basket was..hidden! So Easter Sunday morning always started with chasing up this hidden treasure basket. Later we went also to the church of the village,but the timing was more..comfortable.

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    1. Thank you for sharing. That's a nice tradition - something that kids would love to experience. You probably loved it so much as a kid. We don't have such tradition in my family and no Easter bunnies here :)

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    2. You're welcome - indeed it was a thrilling feeling for us kids :) and we all know that eggs and bunny are actually symbols (of pagan origin) to represent fertility and life - since Jesus today arose from death to life.
      Hans

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