I have some good friends who are Serbian Orthodox and it is part of their religion to do the periodic fasting. Not sure if the writer is Orthodox, but he seems to share some of the same values. Basically, a different take on the Mormon thing of stocking up so that you never come short, the Orthodox practice periodic fasting as an important part of the religion. I have gone to church with the people and the major holidays are kind of like a cross between catholic mass and boot camp. Standing and singing is one thing, standing and singing for close to six hours straight has you thinking the Choir director must run marathons in his spare time and could run just about any DI out there into the dirt. Their Christmas and Easter services both work about the same way, fasting for a few days ahead of time (it is gradual, beginning with elimination of most heavy protein then with a more or less full fast toward the end), then the actual late night holiday service, which starts at around 7PM, gets going at 10PM, and does not end until 5AM. At around 5AM, everyone leaves the main worship hall and goes to a feast nearby (a big pot-luck affair where people bring out the best of the best family recipes, including all items banned during the fast). It is also assumed that the 9AM to noon time period is the "sex break" for the married couples who are expected to abstain from sex during the feast. Kids and old people will sleep during that time period, single adults will be prepping the the lunch for when everyone else returns.

The kids have the Easter egg hunt or gift thing (depending on the holiday), and then since the feast is ongoing, a Barbecue at around noon to 1pm, with the whole thing winding down around 3pm to 4pm the next day. Yeah, some people practically run it like a 3 day op anyway, since preparation for the feast is pretty extravagant and requires discipline to handle and cook food without cheating the fast. Thus a big part of the spiritual lesson is to always keep your desires in check when needed.

As for the guy who wrote the article, I would like to see more. Back in the 2003-2004 time period we had some Christian Lebanese militia guys posting a lot on assaultweb.net about the 1980s civil war in Lebanon and I made some side articles based on interviews with one of them at savvysurvivor.com.

http://savvysurvivor.com/scenarios/scenarios.htm