I started looking into Romanian Orthodox memorial traditions because of two essays by URevolution contributor Alex Pana.
In his account of his grandfather’s Romanian funeral, Alex wrote about the wake, mourning customs, coliva and the rituals surrounding death in his family. In a second essay, he explored pomană, remembrance and lăutari funeral music.
They left me with questions.
What happens after the funeral? Why do the third, ninth and fortieth days matter? What exactly is a parastas? Is pomană the service, the meal, the food that gets given away, or all of the above? And when Romanian families talk about the 40-day memorial, how literally should outsiders interpret the timetable?
Those questions are bigger than Alex’s family experience, so this article takes a different approach. His essays remain the lived-experience heart of URevolution’s Romanian death-and-remembrance coverage. What follows is an explanatory guide to the religious calendar around them.
The funeral is not necessarily the final date on a Romanian Orthodox family’s calendar. Prayers for the person who died may continue at established intervals, especially on the third, ninth and fortieth days, followed by later memorials.
The 40-day parastas is the date English-language readers often go looking for. It makes considerably more sense when you see it as part of a sequence.
There is no single memorial checklist followed identically by every Romanian Orthodox family. Formal church practice sits alongside parish custom, regional tradition and whatever a particular family has carried with it across generations.
Sometimes those layers produce different answers to surprisingly practical questions.
Which Saturday? Is the exact 40th day compulsory? Do we bring coliva? Is the meal the parastas, or is that the pomană?
So consider this a map rather than an instruction manual. Orthodox memorial calendars are one of those occasions when speaking to the family or parish is likely to beat heroic internet archaeology.
The short version: 3, 9 and 40 days
| Memorial | General significance | What may happen |
|---|---|---|
| Third day | Traditionally associated with Christ’s resurrection on the third day and the Holy Trinity | Memorial prayers may coincide with or fall close to the funeral |
| Ninth day | Traditionally connected in Orthodox explanations with the nine ranks of angels | Further memorial prayers may be offered |
| Fortieth day | One of the major Orthodox memorial dates; forty has extensive biblical significance | A parastas may be held, often accompanied by coliva and family acts of remembrance or giving |
That table describes the broad pattern. It does not mean every Romanian Orthodox family holds three identical formal events on those exact dates.
Funeral timing, parish availability and the liturgical calendar can all change what actually happens. The Orthodox Church in America, for example, describes memorial prayers on the third, ninth and fortieth days while also noting that practices vary by place and time. Its overview of prayers for the departed is a useful starting point.
What is a parastas?
A parastas is an Orthodox memorial service for someone who has died.
Depending on the language and church tradition, readers may encounter related terms including Panikhida, Parastasis, Pomen, Mnemosyno and Trisagion. “Memorial service” is the clearest English description for most readers. Orthodox terminology varies across traditions, which is one reason English-language explanations can become confusing.
The central act is prayer for the person who died.
This distinction matters because several Romanian words connected with death often get collapsed into one vague idea once they appear in English.
Parastas
The memorial prayer service itself.
Pomană
Food, alms, a memorial meal or other giving carried out in memory of the person who died. The exact practice varies considerably.
Coliva
A sweetened boiled-wheat dish associated with Orthodox commemorations of the dead and the Christian symbolism of death and resurrection.
These things may appear together. They are not interchangeable.
That distinction also helps explain Alex Pana’s essay about pomană and lăutari. His article describes what remembrance looked and felt like within his family and community. A parastas describes the church service within the wider memorial practice.
What happens on the third day after death?
The third day is an established Orthodox point of commemoration.
Church explanations commonly connect it with Christ’s resurrection on the third day and with the Holy Trinity. Orthodox sources also describe the third day as one of the traditional memorial points following death.
In practice, the funeral itself may take place around this time. That means a Romanian family may not experience the “third-day memorial” as a distinct second event following the funeral.
This is worth remembering when reading lists of Orthodox memorial dates online. A religious calendar can look wonderfully tidy when reduced to bullet points. Death rarely has the courtesy to organise itself accordingly.
Burial regulations, repatriation, administrative delays, family travel and parish schedules can all affect when the funeral actually takes place.
Alex’s account of his grandfather’s funeral is useful here precisely because it shows what a funeral tradition looks like when it is lived rather than diagrammed: relatives, food, mourning practices, church ritual and family memory all overlap.
What happens on the ninth day?
The ninth day is another traditional occasion for prayer for the departed.
One common Orthodox explanation connects the ninth day with the nine ranks of angels and prayers that the departed may be numbered among the saints and heavenly hosts. The Orthodox Church in America’s explanation of the traditional memorial calendar gives this interpretation alongside the third- and fortieth-day observances.
Practically, the ninth day may be less conspicuous than the fortieth.
A family may arrange memorial prayers through its parish without holding anything resembling another funeral-sized gathering. Other families may observe considerably more elaborate customs.
There is no useful universal rule for how many people should attend, how much food should be prepared or what must be given away.
That is local and family territory.
Why is the 40th day after death so important?
The fortieth day is one of the major Orthodox memorial dates and has particular visibility in Romanian death traditions.
The number forty appears repeatedly in Christian scripture and tradition. Orthodox explanations commonly connect the memorial with biblical periods of forty days and with Christ’s Ascension forty days after the Resurrection.
That broad religious significance is well established.
More specific explanations require greater care.
Search online and you will quickly find precise descriptions of where a dead person’s soul supposedly travels during each stage of the first forty days. You may also encounter accounts involving encounters with heaven and hell, aerial toll houses or a judgment occurring on the fortieth day.
Some of these ideas belong to particular strands of Orthodox spiritual writing; some Romanian religious sources explicitly identify related descriptions as popular belief. Basilica.ro, the Romanian Patriarchate’s news agency, for example, describes one such account as credința populară — popular belief — in its discussion of 40-day remembrance. That distinction matters.
They should therefore be presented as beliefs and traditions, not as though the Orthodox Church has issued an itinerary for the afterlife.
For the family organising the memorial, the practical significance is much clearer.
The fortieth day is a major occasion for prayer and remembrance. A parastas may be held. Coliva may be prepared. Food or other items may be shared. Relatives and friends may gather.
The exact combination depends on the parish, region and family.
How do you count 3, 9 and 40 days after death?
Romanian Orthodox guidance commonly counts the date of death as day one.
Using that method:
- the third day is two calendar days after the death;
- the ninth day is eight calendar days after the death;
- the fortieth day is 39 calendar days after the death.
If someone dies on 1 May, for example, the third day is 3 May, the ninth day is 9 May and the fortieth day is 9 June.
That calculates the memorial day.
It does not necessarily tell you when the church service will take place.
What if the 40th day falls on a Sunday or feast day?
This is where a simple calendar starts becoming less simple.
Orthodox sources describe restrictions on memorial services during parts of the liturgical year, particularly around Pascha and major feast periods. Saturdays also have a longstanding association with commemoration of the dead. Orthodox clergy guidance identifies Saturday as the usual day for memorial services and notes special Paschal-period rules.
The published guidance is not completely uniform about every Sunday, feast and local exception.
That is not necessarily evidence that somebody has got Orthodox Christianity wrong. Parish practice can differ.
If you are organising a memorial, ask the parish before booking a restaurant, ordering food or sending forty relatives a date engraved in stone.
The priest can explain whether the parastas should be served on the exact calculated day, moved to a nearby Saturday or held at another permitted time.
Moving the service does not mean the fortieth day itself has somehow moved. It means the church calendar and the memorial calendar need to coexist.
What happens during a Romanian Orthodox parastas?
The details vary, but the centre of the parastas is prayer for the person who died.
A parish may use a full memorial service or a shorter Trisagion, depending on the occasion and local practice.
The prayers include petitions for the departed and commonly conclude with the prayer or response translated into English as “Memory eternal.”
Families may also be asked to bring certain things.
Depending on the parish, these can include:
- the name of the person who died on a pomelnic or memorial list;
- coliva;
- bread;
- wine;
- candles.
Treat that as a list of possibilities rather than a shopping order.
The parish arranging the service should tell the family what it actually expects.
Why is coliva used?
Coliva is one of the most recognisable foods associated with Romanian Orthodox funerals and memorials.
It is generally made from boiled wheat and sweetened, then decorated according to family or regional practice.
Its religious symbolism comes from the Christian image of the grain of wheat: a seed goes into the earth and from it new life emerges. That symbolism connects coliva with death and resurrection. Orthodox sources similarly describe boiled grain as a symbol of resurrection and renewed life.
But food also picks up meanings that theology books cannot manufacture.
Recipes pass through families. Decorations change. Someone remembers how their grandmother made it; somebody else insists theirs used walnuts differently. The ritual object becomes food, and the food becomes memory.
Alex writes about coliva as part of his family funeral experience in Romanian Funeral Traditions: Lessons From My Grandfather’s Funeral.
URevolution may eventually publish a separate researched and tested coliva guide. This article is deliberately not trying to become one.
Where does pomană fit in?
Pomană is harder to compress into one English word.
Depending on context, it can refer to a memorial meal, food given to others, charitable giving or objects distributed in memory of the dead.
Romanian church and cultural sources record substantial variation in what is given, to whom and when. Basilica.ro, for example, describes food and other offerings brought or distributed in memory of the dead while also distinguishing liturgical remembrance from local custom.
This is also the point where formal religious practice and family culture can become particularly entangled.
One family may prepare a substantial meal. Another may distribute food. Another may give particular objects according to a local custom. Families living outside Romania may adapt the whole thing around what is practical where they now live.
The memorial should not be reduced to competitive catering.
A family with limited money is not somehow remembering a dead relative less seriously because it cannot reproduce someone else’s banquet or gift packages.
For the lived version rather than the glossary definition, read Alex Pana’s Romanian Death Rituals: Pomană and Lăutari. His essay explores pomană alongside funeral music, memory and his own family experience.
That article is also what first made me want to understand how these memorial dates fitted together.
What later memorial dates are observed?
The 40th day is not necessarily the end of Orthodox remembrance.
Romanian sources commonly describe further commemorations at intervals including:
- three months;
- six months;
- nine months;
- one year;
- annual anniversaries thereafter.
Some Romanian traditions describe memorial observance extending for several years, including a seven-year commemoration. Basilica.ro has published the sequence of the third, ninth and fortieth days, then three, six, nine and twelve months, followed by annual remembrance up to seven years as an old Romanian Orthodox practice.
Broader Orthodox sources do not always publish the same sequence. Some emphasise particular anniversaries while Romanian parish and family practice may retain a more detailed calendar.
That variation does not need to be tidied into one supposedly definitive answer.
Ask the parish which memorial dates it normally observes, then ask the family which traditions matter to them.
Those are slightly different questions.
What should you ask the family or parish?
If you are organising a Romanian Orthodox memorial and have never done it before, a few direct questions can prevent a lot of confusion:
- Are the memorial dates being counted from the date of death?
- Which service will be used: a full parastas, a shorter Trisagion or another local form?
- Can the service happen on the exact ninth or fortieth day?
- If that date conflicts with the liturgical calendar, when should the memorial be held?
- What does this parish ask the family to bring?
- Is coliva expected?
- Are there fasting rules that affect the food served or distributed?
- Will prayers take place in church, at the grave or both?
- Which later memorial dates does the parish usually observe?
- Are there practical arrangements, parish fees or customary donations we should ask about directly?
That last question is deliberately open.
Do not rely on an internet list claiming that every family must pay a particular amount, buy a prescribed set of objects or provide a certain number of meals.
Those claims are exactly where local custom tends to masquerade as universal religious law.
If you are attending rather than organising
Follow the family’s invitation.
There is no useful universal rule that every visitor must bring one particular object, attend every later memorial or follow a single “Romanian funeral dress code”.
If you are unsure, ask.
“What would be appropriate for me to bring?” is a perfectly respectable question.
So is “Would you like me to come to the church, the meal, or both?”
And perhaps avoid arriving armed with a Google-generated checklist and explaining Romanian tradition to the grieving Romanian family standing in front of you.
They probably have enough going on.
Why URevolution is writing about death and dying
Death is not separate from the subjects URevolution has always written about.
Chronic illness can force people to think about mortality much earlier than they expected. Disability can shape experiences of healthcare, dependence, autonomy, family relationships, grief and end-of-life decision-making. People care for dying relatives. Disabled people lose friends and partners. Families inherit rituals for dealing with bodies, memory and absence.
And eventually, disabled or not, every human body dies.
That gives URevolution good reason to take death seriously as an editorial subject without turning every article about it into a medical article or trying to squeeze disability into places where it does not belong.
Sometimes the interesting question is cultural.
Why does one family sit beside a coffin? Why does another prepare wheat? Why do people gather again after forty days? What survives when families migrate and rituals move with them?
Alex Pana’s two essays opened that door for me.
His story about his grandfather’s funeral shows Romanian death traditions as lived family experience. His essay on pomană and lăutari follows remembrance into food, music and memory.
This article answers some of the questions those stories left me asking.
There will be others.
Continue reading
Romanian Funeral Traditions: Lessons From My Grandfather’s Funeral
Alex Pana’s first-person account of his grandfather’s funeral, including the wake, mourning customs, coliva and family traditions.
Romanian Death Rituals: Pomană and Lăutari
Alex Pana explores pomană, funeral music and the way his family remembered the dead.
