• Orthodox Easter, or Pascha, was celebrated April 19, a week after the Western Church celebrated Easter.
• Orthodox Catholics follow a different church year.
• The main Pascha service is at midnight Saturday followed by a feast.

Through rain parishioners processed around Sts. Cyril and Methodius Orthodox Church midnight Saturday, but the weather didn't stop them from celebrating the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

The quiet solemnity of the traditional service was evident in their candlelit procession and hushed singing. The Gospel was then proclaimed in multiple languages as Easter began.

The Orthodox Easter is celebrated on a different day than the Western Church's Easter because most Orthodox churches follow a different calendar year, said Bill Olnhausen, pastor at St. Nicholas Antiochian Church in Cedarburg.

In the Orthodox Church, Easter is referred to as Pascha, Olnhausen said.

Pascha means Passover, said Tom Mueller, pastor at Sts. Cyril and Methodius Orthodox Church, 2505 S. 30th St. It's called this because Easter is the new Passover, he said.

When the date of Easter was set by the early church, one requirement was that it would always follow Passover and not coincide with it, Mueller said.

During Lent, Orthodox Catholics are supposed to fast by turning vegan and refraining eating from meat, dairy and eggs, Mueller said. He said not everyone is strict about it, but a lot of people are.

There's much more fasting for Orthodox Catholics than Roman Catholics, Mueller said.

The main Pascha service is a midnight service on Saturday night, Olnhausen said.

The service begins in total darkness with only one candle lit from which all the parishioners' candles are lit, Mueller said.

He said the candles are an important symbol of taking the light of Christ.

With church bells ringing, a procession is then led by a candle bearer and cross bearer, followed by parishioners and church leaders.

The procession moves slowly around the outside of the church as each participant holds a candle and sings an Easter song.

The symbolic service then continues on the steps of the church, before continuing inside.

The proclamation of the Resurrection on the church stoop represents taking the Gospel out of the church and proclaiming it to the world, Mueller said.

The service is usually over by 2:15 a.m., Olnhausen said.

"The Orthodox is big on the Resurrection," he said.

After the service, they break their fast with a feast full of the meat and animal products they had given up, Mueller said. People start going home around 4:30 a.m., he said.

"When we celebrate, we seriously celebrate," Olnhausen said.

The Pascha feast is wonderful, he said.

Victoria Gregory, a freshman at NYU from Oyster Bay, New York, said she's always remembered going to the midnight service.

Members of the Orthodox Church say a traditional greeting throughout the Easter season, Mueller said. Although the greeting may be said in the different languages prevalent to each church, the meaning is universal, he said.

One person says "Christ has risen" and another replies "Truly he is risen," said Gregory. For Gregory's family, she said this is all said in Greek because they are Greek Orthodox.

Gregory said Pascha is a cultural thing for her.

"I like it because it's different from everyone else's and I get to celebrate my culture," she said.

She said one of her favorite traditions is a game played with the dyed eggs.

Everyone has an egg and then people knock their egg against another's to see who's egg is the strongest, she said. The traditional greeting is said before knocking the eggs together, she said. The game is played repeatedly in order to determine who has the strongest egg, the one that doesn't crack, she said. The winner gets all the luck, she said.

The hardboiled eggs are always dyed red because that's how it was done in the early church, Olnhausen said.

Mueller said the spiritual content of the feast and the rich family customs don't really allow people to add in anything else. The Easter bunny isn't a big deal, he said.