The Paschal Greeting (Christ is Risen!)
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! — Christos anesti! · khree-STOHS ah-NEH-stee
In brief
From Pascha until the feast of the Ascension forty days later, Orthodox Christians greet one another not with "hello" but with "Christ is risen!" — answered "Truly He is risen!" (or "Indeed He is risen!"). The exchange is the Church's oldest news, compressed to four words, and for forty days it replaces ordinary greeting in church, at home, on the phone. Every Orthodox language has its own form, and hearing the greeting volley back and forth in Greek, Slavonic, Arabic, and English at once is one of the unforgettable sounds of Pascha night.
The greeting and where it comes from
The pattern is as old as the first Pascha. When the two disciples raced back from Emmaus, the gathered apostles met them with the news already in the form of a greeting: "The Lord is risen indeed" (Luke 24:34). The Church has simply never stopped saying it. One believer proclaims, "Christ is risen!"; the other confirms, "Truly He is risen!" — not an echo but a confession, each party testifying to the other. The greeting is used through the whole forty-day season of Pascha, until the leave-taking of the feast on the eve of the Ascension, and it comes with its own customs: in many traditions the greeting is exchanged with a triple kiss, and it opens letters, phone calls, and sermons. During these forty days it is joined everywhere by the Paschal troparion — "Christ is risen from the dead" — sung at every service and prayed in place of the usual opening prayers of the home prayer rule.
At the midnight service of Pascha the greeting has its grand entrance: the priest proclaims it again and again, in every language he can manage, and the whole congregation thunders the response. Many parishes carry the multilingual joy into the afternoon's Agape Vespers, where the Gospel itself is read in as many tongues as the parish can muster — the Resurrection announced to all nations at once.
In every language
Because Orthodoxy has always prayed in the language of each people, the greeting exists in a family of forms, and Orthodox faithful delight in trading them. In Greek: Christos anesti! — Alithos anesti! In Church Slavonic, used by Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Bulgarians: Khristos voskrese! — Voistinu voskrese! In Romanian: Hristos a inviat! — Adevarat a inviat! In Arabic: Al-Masih qam! — Haqqan qam! An English speaker who learns two or three of these will find them warmly received; the answer may come back in a fourth language, and no one minds. The greeting is the same confession in every tongue, a small Pentecost repeated forty days a year.
The customs the greeting carries
The greeting travels with a cluster of Paschal customs. Red-dyed eggs are exchanged and cracked against each other with the greeting itself — the egg an old image of the tomb broken open from within, its red the blood of Christ; tradition connects the custom with St. Mary Magdalene, who is said to have presented an egg to the emperor Tiberius with the words "Christ is risen." At Paschal Matins the sermon of St. John Chrysostom, read in his name at this service for centuries, is proclaimed aloud — the homily that calls everyone to the feast whether they fasted from the first hour or arrived at the eleventh, and laughs at death to its face. And through all of Bright Week and the Paschal season, the Church's joy takes physical form: by ancient custom, enshrined in the canons, there is no kneeling from Pascha to Pentecost. For forty days, the greeting does what greetings are for — it tells you, every time you meet a face, what world you are living in.