Eastern Orthodoxy

I've been a catechumen for about three and a half months now, not quite sure when I'm going to be chrismated, but it's comin'. Anyone have any personal experience with the Eastern Orthodox Church and/or thoughts about it in general?

at one newspaper where i worked, the editor was greek orthodox, heavily involved in the local church. the guys at the associated press specifically flagged any stories about the church, the patriarch, etc., for special attention to our wire editors. we ran more orthodox church news than any paper in the southeast. and the annual greek festival at the church received particularly heavy attention, even though in fact there were very few greeks or orthodox peeps in the community. but whatever, i didn't hold it against the church. we also weren't allowed to ever run pictures of snakes in the paper, but i don't know if that was an orthodox thing or if the editor was just scared of snakes.

i'm sorry for my complete lack of insight on your thread. my only experience with orthodox stuff was through my goofy boss.

I used to sing in a Ukrainian Orthodox wedding choir!

although i was raised as a roman catholic, my great-grandparents were russian orthodox so i have quite a few orthodox relatives. i haven't been to many orthodox services, but i went to a few weddings when i was very young -- all i remember was that the services were VERY long (which i remember because the church had no pews), portions of the service were in old church slavonic, and that the church itself was very beautiful (with the icons and the gilded iconostasis). looking back on it, it strikes me as being like roman catholicism on steroids (no offense meant to anyone orthodox or to belittle doctrinal differences between catholicism and orthodoxy!)

intellectually, i also like the fact that orthodoxy places a stronger emphasis on easter than christmas -- which strikes me as being more correct than other christian churches since the point of christianity is that Jesus Christ arose from the dead. i also think that the russian orthodox cross looks really cool.

also, i never understood why each nationality w/n orthodoxy distinguishes itself (e.g., russian orthodox, greek orthodox, romanian orthodox, etc.) in my grandparents' town, there were 3 orthodox churches -- a russian orthodox church, a carpatho-rusyn orthodox church, and a ukrainian orthodox church. w/ the exception of eastern-rite catholic churches, as a point of contrast, every catholic church calls itself Roman Catholic (even though different ethnic groups, of course, also went to different catholic churches).

i also like the fact that orthodoxy places a stronger emphasis on easter than christmas -- which strikes me as being more correct than other christian churches since the point of christianity is that Jesus Christ arose from the dead.

interesting to see whether winter solstice was as big a celebration/event in eastern europe as it was in the west?