Holy Week
Holy Week is the Christian week from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday.
Each of the days of Holy Week has its own traditions of services in the West. Believers are encouraged to follow in their prayers with readings from the Gospel the account of each of the actions from the time of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the crucifixion and death of Jesus on Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter Sunday. While each day has special mass celebrations in the Western churches, the week's most elaborate services are on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. In the Reformation, emphasis was taken away from the Passion and placed upon the resurrection of Jesus, but contemporary Protestant Churches, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, holds the three days between Good Friday and Easter to be the holiest days of the calendar.
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Eastern Orthodox Christianityy
In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, during Holy Week, Orthros (Matins) services for each day are held during the preceding evening. Thus, the Matins service of Monday is sung on Palm Sunday evening, and so on. (The services of Sunday through Tuesday evenings are often called Bridegroom Matins, because of their theme of Christ-as-Bridegroom.)
Divine Liturgy of the Last Supper is held on the morning of Holy Thursday. Matins of Holy Friday, with its Twelve Gospel Readings, is held on the evening of Holy Thursday; Matins of Holy Saturday is held on the evening of Holy Friday. A richly-embroidered sheet called the "epitaphios" representing Christ laid in the tomb is carried in a candlelit procession and laid in a "tomb" decorated with flowers.
Divine Liturgy is held Saturday morning. This is the "Proti Anastasi" (First Resurrection) service, with a change from dark vestments to light ones.
Saturday night at midnight, the service begins in darkness. A single candle is lighted by the priest, from a light on the altar which is never extinguished. The light spreads from person to person until everyone holds a lighted candle. The Divine Liturgy follows. A reception or party usually follows, sometimes lasting till dawn. Slavs bring Easter baskets filled with eggs, meat, butter, and cheese -- foods from which the faithful have abstained during Lent -- to be blessed.
A Vesper service, often combined with an Easter egg hunt and other activities for children, may be held Easter day, but there is no regular Sunday morning Liturgy.
Holy Week throughout the world
Philippines
In this largely Roman Catholic nation, Holy Week, known as Semana Santa, is treated as one of the most important religious festivals of the entire year. At Mass on Palm Sunday, Catholics carry "palaspas" or palm leaves to be blessed by the priest. Many Filipinos bring home the palm leaves after the Mass and place these above their front doors or their windows, believing that doing so can ward off evil spirits. Holy Monday marks the beginning of the Pabasa (literally, reading) or Pasyon, the marathon chanting of the story of Jesus' life, passion, and death, which continues day and night, for as long as two straight days. A popular Holy Thursday tradition is the Bisita Iglesia (Church Visit), which involves visiting several Churches at which the faithful would pray the Stations of the Cross. The last Mass before Easter is also celebrated on Holy Thursday, usually including a reenactment of the Washing of the Feet of the Apostles; this Mass is followed by the procession of the Blessed Sacrament before it is taken to the Altar of Repose. Good Friday in the Philippines is commemorated with street processions, the Way of the Cross, the commemoraton of Jesus' Seven last words(Siete Palabras) and a Passion play called the Sinakulo. In some communities (most famously in the province of Pampanga), the processions include devotees who self-flagellate and sometimes even have themselves nailed to crosses as expressions of penance. After three o'clock in the afternoon of Good Friday (the time at which Jesus is traditionally believed to have died), noise is discouraged and the faithful are urged to keep a solemn and prayerful disposition through Black Saturday. Easter morning is marked with joyous celebration, the first being the dawn Salubong, wherein large statues of Jesus and Mary are brought in procession together to meet, imagining the first reunion of Jesus and his mother Mary after Jesus' Resurrection. This is followed by the joyous Easter Mass.