Festival of St. John of the Fire, 2016

Fire jumping - photo by Newell

photo by Newell

There are villages on Samos like Vourliotes, were ancient pagan folk customs are still a recognizable part of the Festival of St. John of the Fire.  The festival is usually held on a Sunday night in late June and features music, food, wine, folk dancing, and the curious ritual of village children jumping over bonfires made from the dried floral wreaths that have been decorating local doorways since May Day (the first day of Summer). The festival is also called the Feast St. John's Eve and is usually followed by a Greek national holiday on Monday.  The Village festival and the official state holiday seem to be connected, but both events go by several different names, and even the Greeks seem a little vague about origin and meaning of the two events.



photo by Newell

photo by Newell

St. John's Nativity Day is celebrated near the Summer Solstice.  It celebrates the birthday of Christ's cousin, John the Baptist.  In Greece he is called St. John the Forerunner, who foretold the coming of Christ the Messiah.  The historic dates for John and Christ's birthdays have been lost, but by the 4th Century, a proto Christ Mass was being celebrated near the Winter Solstice to compete with the pagan Yule festivities.  According to the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist was born six months earlier than Christ. which made St. John's Nativity Day a perfect fit to co-opt the pagan festival of Midsummer's Eve.  In Vourliotes, the Feast of St. John of the Fire has retained the pre Christian, pagan traditions of feasting, drinking, folk dancing, and leaping over bonfires made from the dried May Day wreathes.  A lawyer in Karlovassi offered that the St. John of the Fire Festival may have also once had a connection to classical times when Prometheus was honored for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to Man.  But that's another research project, and I know what Prometheus got for his trouble.

photo by Newell

For different earlier postings on the same event (2012 and 2013) see:
http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/06/folk-dancing.html
http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2012/06/village-festival.html  

Hike to Kokkari

 

With the Euro value down and gas prices low, you would expect this to be a good year for travel; but news of the refugees flooding into the Greek islands near Turkey last year has resulted in a 45 percent drop in tourism for those islands.  With Greek pensions cut in half and with taxes to double this year, the result has been devastating, especially for coastal towns like Kokkari who live or die by the tourist trade.  The irony is that the refugees are now being routed into Western Europe through Italy.  The nightly invasions of the beaches here have stopped and the holding camps are empty, but this year Western news is all about the election.

From the eastern rim of the village you can look down the mountain and see the coastal outline of Kokkari.  In seasons past, we were used to seeing Dutch tourists, or the flinty German hikers eating lunch in the Plataea.  They'd often drive or hike up the mountain from Kokkari in the morning, stop in Vourliotes for lunch, then hike on to Manolates, or walk back down the mountain for a swim in the Aegean.  This year Kathy wanted to hike down the mountain, have lunch and a drink in Kokkari, then catch the bus back to Vourliotes.  Down the mountain sounded easy enough, so I agreed.



Crossing a brook

When Kathy retired last year, she joined a gym and went almost daily to walk on their treadmills and swim in their pool.  When I retired it meant that the dog and I had more time to spend together in the golf cart or the recliner.  The scenery on today's hike was beautiful, but the soreness in my back and legs has been a painful reminder that the recliner and the channel changer have not been my friends.

 

Easter Weekend on Samos (part 2) - Saturday, Sunday

photo by Newell

Saturday

photo by Newell

Maruyo, a neighbor in her late eighties or early nineties placed a neat little stack of olive wood and a bag of charcoal by my outdoor grill, and brought Kathy a bowl full of little sour cherries as ‘welcome back’ gifts.

Later that morning, we drove to Samos Town to pick up a few supplies and have our Wi-Fi reconnected.  Coming down the mountain road we spotted a feral peacock.



A whole goat on the scale (head in plastic bag) -  photo by Newell

There was more activity in town than we had expected.  Roasted goat or lamb is to Greek Easter what roasted turkey is to an American Thanksgiving.  The butcher shop was packed like I’d never seen it before.  People were three deep at the counter, with a line out into the street.  Many of the customers were buying whole carcasses with the heads and tails still attached.

There was another night service at the Orthodox Church that ends at midnight with the symbolic ascension of Christ from the tomb.  Everyone leaves the church carrying a lit candle, and boys in the street setting off fireworks like it was New Year’s Eve.

Easter Sunday



photo by Newell

There was the formal indoor service at 11:00 AM followed by an outdoor pageant, liturgy, and reception in the Platea.  Pappa Kosta passed out bright-red dyed Easter eggs to the faithful, then brought two eggs by the house for Kathy who’d ‘played hookey’ from the service.

Sunday evening Kathy and I hiked up the mountain to the Vronta Monastery where we bumped into a neighbor who had us over for coffee.  It was after dark when we got home.


Click here for an older post on the Vrona Monastery  http://mysamoshome.blogspot.gr/2013/07/evening-walks-to-vronta-monestary.html

Easter Weekend on Samos Greece - Good Friday



Good Friday in Vourliotes, 2016
photo by Newell

Easter weekend is a very big holiday in Greece.  Many businesses close from Saturday through Wednesday for the celebration.  Because of differences in the Julian and the Gregorian Calendars, Orthodox Easter fell on May first this year.  We had booked our plane tickets months ago, so the holiday was an unexpected bonus to our trip.

We touched down on Samos in the afternoon of Good Friday.  It was in the morning of Good Friday that Christ and the two thieves were crucified.  In deference to the Jewish holiday, the Romans hastened those executions so the bodies could be removed from the crosses and buried by sundown on the eve of the Sabbath (Saturday) and the first day of Passover.



Vourliotes' Own Papa Kostas
photo by Newell

At sunset, the church bells in our village began the call to worship, and a short time later we could hear the priest singing the Orthodox service from our house.  This was the first of several progressive services and a pageant to commemorate the death of Christ.  The whole village turned out for the event.  Each church or monastery has a special canopy or epitaphio that is intricately decorated with fresh flowers.  The flowered canopy represents the body and spirit of Christ.  After the first service it was carried in progress through the village and out to the cemetery, where the body of Christ is symbolically buried among the departed villagers.  The procession then moved to the Platea (village square) where a another was sung by the priest, who showered the crowd of bystanders with fresh flower petals.  The pageant ended back at church where the celebrants passed under the floral ‘epitaph’ and were sprinkled with cologne water.  There may have been still another service, but I had to leave.


Flower decorated Epitaphio - center
photo by Newell
 

By the end of the night I was exhausted.  We had just finished a 24-hour travel day and I had stood or walked another 3 hours during the procession.  When I finally crawled into bed, my last conscious thoughts were of the generations of our neighbors who had been and might be, reenacting that same pageant for centuries to come.  I also thought about the mortal remains of villagers who lie buried under their marble crypts, facing the East, patiently waiting for the dawn of their own resurrections. There is an aura of peaceful continuity and permanence about this place that I miss when I'm back in the States.





The Vourliotes Cemetery at night
photo by Newell