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Comment by heurifk | Hacker News Reader

I suspect this is to deter Russians from coming home for the Orthodox Easter which is way more important than in the West.

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I am a Russian living abroad. I know literally no one coming back to Russia for Easter. It's the first time I even heard of this idea.

Summer or New Year are the times when Russians are more likely to go to visit their relatives and friends.

same here. what a weird idea

Do you have any idea why that is? Length of travel? Cost of travel? I'm a Pole living abroad and every year I try to go to visit my family for Easter, it seems like a pretty normal thing to do.

Thank you for sharing that! It's amazing that this tradition exists in Poland. Do Poles come to see family for New Year / Christmas?

Oh, and by the way: Russia has state holidays from Jan 1st till Jan 10th (+/-, every year is slightly different), which makes it a lot easier to meet everyone.

Easter does not have any state recognition in Russia, so everyone would be quite busy with their regular errands, I guess.

Yeah, we go home for Christmas too. So per year I'll usually go for Christmas and for Easter. Maybe if the year is really good we'll try to visit at the end of summer too.

Orthodox Christianity is not a big thing among the current generation of Russian diaspora, so Easter doesn't have any cultural significance to most of them.

Summer is a good time to visit because of the mild climate, and New Years', because it has always been a big holiday, culturally.

The only reason I got home to Slovenia for Easter is, it's a 4-day-weekend in the UK.

This comment shows how little westerners know about Russia and Russians. Easter is of very little importance in Russia, especially for Russians living abroad.

For religious Russians abroad there are Orthodox churches in almost every country, even in Thailand and Cambodia.

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