BLOSSOMS AND GUNPOWDER…A GREEK EASTER

This year the Greek Easter has come late… trundling in three weeks after everyone else has celebrated the event throughout the world. Very little has changed since last Easter…we’re still in lockdown, masks etc…no grand festivities in churches… no flocking to villages from cities and towns to be with family and roasting the lamb on the spit…no large gatherings and knocking back glasses of wine and raki which set you off dancing nimbly and kicking high to Greek folk music. The world seems to have come to a standstill but outside… nature is oblivious to the pandemic. It’s unfolding its brilliance in layers of colours in splashes of spring sunshine The air is full of birdcalls. I look up and hear them warbling and trilling among the waxy new leaves of the orange and lemon trees. The bees, spoilt for choice, are buzzing into nectary blossoms …sweet scented orange and lemon blossoms, fiery red pomegranate flowers and pink apple flowerets.

 For most Greeks, Easter has huge religious and cultural significance and is celebrated more devoutly than Christmas. Good Friday, especially, is steeped in the rituals of the church. The morning of Good Friday starts with the tolling of church bells…slow and solemn. The devotees trickle into church to kiss the cross and the epitafios…a wooden casket, symbolizing the tomb of Christ, laid on a bier. The women in the parish spend hours decorating the epitafios with the first blooms of spring…garlands of saffron coloured marigolds, intoxicating white lilies, carnations and roses in pinks and whites.

At around eight in the evening, the congregation gathers and pushes to the front of the church to kiss the cross before it is placed in the casket…the old ladies in black, squeezing in from all sides and cutting into the queue. As the line thins down after an hour, the priest walks along the aisle swinging the thurible and blessing us with puffs of incense smoke, followed by four bearers with the epitafios on their shoulders. The priest leads the procession out of the church, singing the funeral dirge in ancient Greek… the devout members of the parish, marching close to his heels, following every lilt and fall of his voice. The rest of us, an untidy throng, saunter behind in groups of families, relatives , friends, and neighbours, murmuring in low voices, engaging in small talk about our children who have flown the coop, food, work, politics everything…the whole of life debated on this holy day in the true essence of the Greek spirit…drawing in the random threads of our colourful secular life into the pomp and ceremony of religion…when man meets God halfway.

 Dusk folds in layers of darkness and the stars come out to twinkle. Little children skip along swinging colourful lanterns with tea lights and the rest of us cup our candle flames against the fresh spring breezes. We pass houses where people hang out of their balconies, sprinkle rose water on us and scatter blossoms and rose petals on our heads. The priest keeps chanting and we… …anonymous in the dark, shadowy figures by candle light… continue chattering, our voices rising to a swell. We snake in and out of residential streets with more flowers thrown on our heads. After an hour or so, our procession has dwindled down, groups have broken away…parents dragging away their children, fractious and cranky…and others silently slipping away into the night. I nudge Yiannis to suggest that we should branch off as well and go home…but he’s adamant that we continue…after all we’ve come so far. It somehow triggers memories of my childhood in Malaysia, mum insisting we do the whole Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday…she marching ahead and singing and we dragging our reluctant weary little bodies behind her. So very little has changed for me…I’m still walking in the procession, but now with Yiannis… I wonder if it’s some kind of penance for a previous sinful life. Finally we trudge back uphill to the church, legs tired and jaws aching. We pass under the epitafios which is held high…and we the deserving, who have soldiered it to the end… receive the full blessings of the night and walk back home, fatigued and famished…but cleansed. Most Greeks return to a dinner of vegetable soup, it being a day of fast. But I’ve convinced Yiannis that instant noodles are just as plain and meagre for a day of fast and abstinence. So we sit at the kitchen table, the two fasters… and wolf down a steaming bowl of noodles.

The midnight mass on Holy Saturday is the culmination of the Easter service. I still remember my first Easter in Greece in the April of 1984 in Athens. Yiannis was doing his military service in Nafplion in the Peloponnese and so we decided to meet in Athens and spend Easter with friends. I was still reeling from my first introduction to Greece. I had set foot in this country in the December of 1983 and was still getting my head around the language, customs and mores of this ancient land… the land of mythology… where gods gobbled up their children and struck terror in the hearts of men from the lofty heights of Mount Olympus. So there I was on Easter Saturday in Athens with Yiannis… and we were off to the midnight service. The pavements were lined with bitter orange trees, shedding their scented blossoms on our heads under a star studded night sky. I could feel the cool breath of the goddess Athena from her temple, the Parthenon. I was in awe…with the thought that I was walking on hallowed ground where the ancient philosophers… Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others had trod.

We arrived at the church with its enormous domed roof and stood outside with a hundred other people, attired for a Saturday night out…women in stylish dresses and hand crafted jewellery and men in smart shirts and jackets. The church was packed…the congregation spilling out into the church grounds. The atmosphere outside was vibrant with chatter and laughter while the priest droned on in the dark candle-lit interior of the church. People kept glancing at their watches and voices were spiked with excitement when the priest finally emerged in a cloud of incense… and at the stroke of twelve midnight, he shouted over the swell of voices…` Christ has risen! ‘ The congregation then surged forward with arms stretched out to light their candle with the holy flame… and it was then that all hell broke loose. The ground we stood on shook with a tremendous eruption of firecrackers like machine guns rattling off blindly into the night and the midnight sky was ablaze with fireworks exploding into each other and raining down showers of sparks. It felt like a war zone…we were being bombarded by an invisible enemy and they were everywhere. We pushed through the multitudes and walked under the trees, seeking cover. But they sought us out even there… firecrackers and rockets bursting everywhere, even among the boughs of the bitter orange trees. I suffered from shell shock afterwards. Thank goodness all our following Easters were spent in Chania, where the battle doesn’t rage as fiercely.

So this year, like last year, is going to be a quiet Easter. We’ll miss the camaraderie of the Good Friday procession, the lamb turning on the spit over the glowing charcoal, the noise and fuss of the festivities…maybe even the spluttering firecrackers. But most of all…the hugging and planting of kisses on each other’s cheeks…freely and spontaneously. I shall look forward to it next year.

Happy Greek Easter and stay well.