Tomorrow is Greek Orthodox Easter. The simple answer for the
difference in the date used by Greeks and others of the Eastern Orthodox faith from
that followed by Protestants and Catholics is that the former calculate their
Easter based upon the Julian calendar while the latter use the modern Gregorian
calendar. If you want to know precisely
how the date is determined, check out this link
to my post a few years back around this time.
But no matter how the date is determined, Easter is by far
the main event in Eastern Orthodoxy. It
is preceded by more than a week of significant religious and cultural
observations. And on Mykonos, Easter
literally brings the island back to life.
In the winter, Mykonos is a sleepy island village with
virtually no tourists, no business, few open bars, fewer restaurants, and no
clubs. But come Easter Week everything
changes. Red and yellow springtime
poppies burst to life all over the island’s hillsides, and those and still more
varieties of flowers embroider the blanket of green covering the nearby holy
island of Delos. There are Church
services every day of Holy Week, as well as daily preparations for the feast to
come at the end. Breads and cookies are
readied on Monday and Tuesday, baking is done on Wednesday, and eggs are dyed
red on Thursday, the day before Christ was put up on the Cross.
By Thursday, Mykonos is filled with mainland Greeks flocking
to their vacation homes and others looking to participate in a perfect example
of spiritual and temporal coexistence: Easter church rituals strictly observed
during the day, followed by the island’s as nearly hallowed party traditions
through the night. But that taste of the
coming mid-summer craziness is short lived, for if you don’t catch the action
that weekend come by in June, because Mykonos is back in hibernation come
Tuesday.
Evening services on Good Friday start at seven in the old town’s
three main churches, Kiriake, Metropolis, and Panachra. At precisely nine, each church’s clergy and
worshipers leave their church in separate processions carrying their church’s epitaphios (the painted or embroidered
cloth representation of Christ on a bier elaborately adorned in spring flowers
and symbolizing his tomb) along a prearranged route, winding past the other two
churches before ending up back at their own to complete the service. It represents the funeral of Christ, and
Mykonians and visitors line the route, some standing on balconies and
sprinkling the participants below with a mixture of rose water and perfumes,
the rodhonoro used on Christ’s body
when taken down from the cross.
The same three churches serve as the scene of the following
night’s Holy Saturday services. Most
generally start heading off to church around ten, but for certain everyone is
there by midnight. For that is the high
point of Easter, when church bells ring out across Greece and even total
strangers exchange the traditional Christos
Anesti and Alithos Anesti
greetings that Christ has risen, kiss each other, and light each other’s
candles to share the light and joy of the occasion—a light brought to Greece
for just this purpose from the Holy Flame of Christ’s nativity cave in
Jerusalem. Worshipers carry the light
back into their homes or their favorite restaurants, except for the hearty
souls who remain in church for the balance of a service that lasts hours more
into the morning.
Now it is time to challenge each other with the customary
one-to-one smacking of those dyed-red eggs for good luck to the winner (mine
always cracks first) and devour the traditional mayiritsa soup (made from parts of a lamb you may ask me about if
you really want to know), fluffy tsoureki
easter bread, and salads to break the forty-day fast leading up to Easter.
But the big feast, the one everyone looks forward to, comes
on Sunday. That’s when all the work of
the week and all the spring lambs find their purpose. There is church, too, of course, but this day
is more about celebrating with family and friends. And eating.
Dieting starts Monday.
Kalo Paska
Jeff — Saturday
Posts
If it t'wasn't for all the church stuff, it sounds like a wonderful celebration. (Except for the lamb parts in that soup...)
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, EvKa, the lamb no longer misses them.
DeleteAgree with above comment. If it wasn't for the religious part, would sound great, and also the lam in the soup.
ReplyDeleteMy question is about how people "fast" for 40 days. People would get seriously sick if they do that. Do you meant Lent where people give up something they enjoy?
I'm not up on religious rites.
What do non-religious people do there or people of other religions? I guess just enjoy the food.
My friend Gary--writing as Diffraction--gave a perfect explanation in his comment to your and Evka's questions. The thing to bear in mind is that Greece up until relatively recently has been virtually homogeneous in its religion and, as such, has many of its practices ingrained in as part of the Greek culture even for those who are not particularly religious.
DeleteAs for the fasting, it's not the same as a fast for observant Jews where all food is avoided, but--as Gary points out, selective.
For a more detailed idea of what Greeks mean by fasting, here's a link to a post I wrote four years ago about the start of Greek Lent, titled "Keep it Clean." http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/2012/03/keep-it-clean.html
Dear Kathy,
ReplyDeleteThe 40 day long Lent is a spiritually preparatory period for the forthcoming religious events. People are expected to fast as a token of compassion for the passion of Christ. However, this fasting is not exclusive of all food (as it is e.g. in Islam during Ramadan). Greek Orthodox fasting basically means abstaining from certain kinds of foods, basically meat and dairy products. Even so, it is not usually observed throughout the whole 40 day period, but rather during the Holly Week. So it's perfectly healthy and safe. As for your second question, well, there are virtually no non-Christian Orthodox people in Mykonos and in Greece in general. Christian Orthodox amount to 98% of the population. Not all of them embrace the religious events with the same spiritual warmth however, but in the countryside the physical and spiritual participation is way more universal, almost dominating daily life. Hope this helps. Gary Parisis.
Thank you, my friend, for a perfect explanation! And here I thought all you knew was how to fearlessly fly aircraft! :) Καλο Πασχα, and hope to see you soon.
DeleteKalo Pascha Jeff
DeleteWhat a wonderful post, and an even more wonderful tradition. I've participated in midnight Easter Vigil services here in the States (based in part on the ancient rituals that gave birth to the Greek Orthodox traditions) and they're very special -- quite different from most people's understanding of "church."
ReplyDeleteI love learning about traditions in other lands, thanks for the great window to Mykonos, Jeff!
Thanks, Susan, but when it comes to learning of traditions in other lands, you're the one to whom I turn!
DeleteSo are they basically vegan during this period of time? Lovely post.
ReplyDeleteThanks, and I'd definitely call it closer to vegan than the normal, red-meat-glorified menu.
ReplyDeleteSo aren't there any Muslims, Jews, Hindus in Greece? There are immigrants, visitors, professionals with reason to be there. (And one former lawyer turned mystery writer.)
ReplyDeleteWhat do they do? Just join in the festivities? Is everyone expected to eat that diet? Doesn't sound bad to me.
Kathy D, permit me to give you a quick overview. When Greece joined the E.U. in 1981 it was essentially a homogeneous land of less than ten million. With financial prosperity came Filipinos to serve in domestic jobs no longer done by Greeks and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought a wave of Eastern European immigrants seeking better lives, but it was after 2002 and the confluence of the euro currency launch, America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Greece’s all-out building boom for the 2004 Athens Olympics, that the floodgates opened. Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Poles came to put their much needed construction skills to work for pay far greater than any they could dream of back home, and Greece’s porous island and mainland borders became an irresistible magnet for those fleeing Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and struggling Africa. A situation intensifying in recent years with Greece serving as a portal to the rest of the European Union.
DeleteGreece’s population is now almost eleven and a half million, of which ten percent are estimated to be immigrants. Approximately 8,000 Greeks are Jews. No one is required to join in the festivities or eat anything they don’t want, but it’s clearly a country heavily influenced by the Orthodox Church.
Thanks for the quick overview. I do know about the recent migration situation and so was asking about the comment about the country being 98% Christian Orthodox. It seemed to me that people of other religions had migrated there.
ReplyDeleteAnd I knew there were Jewish people in the Greek Resistance in WWII and also that the Nazis committed atrocities against them, as well as resisters and many other Greeks.
Many of the immigrants since the fall of the Soviet Union were Christian Orthodox (though not Greek Orthodox), so the 98% figure seems accurate even though the total immigrant population is more likely 10%. Approximately 80,000 Jews lived in Greece (mainly Thessaloniki) pre-WWII. Only 8,000 now.
Delete