Our Greek Easter

Our Greek Easter

This year Easter will be celebrated on the same weekend in Australia and Greece. Easter in Australia seems to be at the wrong time of the year as it is Autumn, and not a time of re-birth when bright yellow chicks pop out of eggs, and spring lambs frisk on the hills. Instead, it’s a time of yellowing leaves, and the time to begin lighting wood fires.



Easter is a beautiful time to be in Greece, the hills are green and all the spring flowers are blooming.

                                           A bunch of spring flowers I picked in Lemnos

For Greeks Easter is the most important date on their religious calendar, more important to them than Christmas. Easter is when families get together and feast together.

There’s no escaping the importance of these rituals in this very religious and traditional country, for in Greece religious rites have been absorbed into the very fabric of society – well accepted, and consistently practiced.

Good Friday 

On Good Friday people in the towns and villages carry candles and follow the procession of the Epitaphios.





















On my very first visit to Greece Takis and I went to Rhodes, to join Takis’ brother and sister for their Easter celebrations.


In my book about our Greek renovation adventure I wrote,

‘Easter involves a whole round of services. I was looking forward to attending as many as possible and in addition I was very happy to be celebrating Easter in a European spring.

As a child I’d always decorated a basket with spring flowers – primroses, bluebells, crocuses, and grape hyacinths – and placed it on the breakfast table filled with Easter eggs.’

‘We stayed in a hotel near George and Koula’s apartment, and we did managed to go to most of the Easter services. On Thursday after supper we attended their church, Agei Anargiri, to see the cross carried around the church. On Friday we watched the epitafios carried out into the streets. This is a flower-decorated casket and represents the coffin of Christ. It was quite large and took several men to carry it around the bounds of the parish. The crowd was now larger than the previous night, and on returning to the church people filled church and courtyard, and overflowed into the street.’



‘We’d been to Greek Easter services in Australia, but this was different. It was part of a living tradition. There is not an anxiety to ‘get it right’, such as I’d once noticed in a small Orthodox church in Melbourne. In this church one could not help but notice the anxiety of attendees - evident when an argument broke out during the service between the priest and a member of the congregation! Whatever it was about it involved loud shouting and dramatic gestures. And then later when the epitafios (the flower decked casket) became stuck in the doorway it became obvious that helpful members had over-decorated it, without taking into account the dimensions of the doorway! The pallbearers had to push to get it through the door and in the end the flowers were scattered.’


Saturday 
Saturday in Holy Week the ceremony of the resurrection takes place in the courtyard in front of all churches and bells are rung all over the towns and cities.

‘On Saturday afternoon we drove out into the countryside to stay a couple of nights with friends of Koula and George. While there we planned to attend the Saturday night service – the most important of all the services – in the village church. When we arrived at the house I realized something important was going on in the garden, but Koula hurried me past. When she told me the gardener was slaughtering the Pascal lamb on the front lawn I almost ran into the house!’

‘Later that evening we drove to the village church, and arriving before the crowd we found a place inside. Though we were early, already the psalter was chanting the traditional Easter psalms. Slowly the rest of the congregation filtered in, all decked in their finest clothes. Youths with slicked spiky hair and girls in fashion’s latest frills and flounces stood with their families. Many of the smaller children carried huge cardboard candles almost as big as themselves.’

‘The priest arrived late. (George whispered to me that he was once a barber in America and now runs a café in a nearby village, where he’ll pose for tourists in his priestly gear – for a fee.) We continued listening to the old Byzantine chants, though these were often drowned out by loud bangs from firecrackers impatiently being let off in the car park outside. For the young boys had no intention of waiting for the correct moment when the priest declared Christos Anesti to fire off their volleys. We however did wait, with our candles ready. Then at midnight, when everyone called out ‘Christos Anesti, Alithos Anesti’, the priest used his taper to light one person’s candle, and then the fire spread as each in turn lit a neighbour’s candle.’

A Very Old Tradition?

In many countries there are fire-jumping rituals. For instance, in far off times there was a practice in Lemnos of extinguishing sacred and household fires once a year. These were rekindled with a flame brought by boat from the holy island of Delos. How strikingly similar this very ancient ritual is to current Greek Easter rites. Today the holy fire that is used to light the candles at the Saturday night Easter service has supposedly been brought from Jerusalem and from there distributed across Greece. (More probably the fire that is brought out to the people from behind the iconostasis – the screen at the front of each church – was kindled by the priest just before the service.) 

Easter Sunday 

This is the biggest church holiday in Greece. All over the country lambs are roasted on a spit and there is wine in abundance. Red eggs are cracked against each other and the person with the last remaining whole (uncracked) egg will have good luck.

‘When we also returned to the house after the church midnight candle lighting service for a very late supper of chicken soup. We also played the traditional game of cracking our hardboiled red eggs against each another’s. On the table was the mageritsa soup, though I wasn’t brave enough to try it as this traditional Easter soup is made with lamb’s offal and vegetables. I was amazed to find it was well into Sunday morning when we fell into bed.’

‘We slept in, and then woke to potter around slowly, awaiting the arrival of many more friends and relatives for the lunch. They were coming to join the household for this final Paschal feast, a special lunch that included pasties, salad, wine and cakes. And, in pride of place, was the lamb I’d nearly seen slaughtered the previous day. It had been slowly cooking on a rotisserie all morning. And again I was amazed to find myself by eating some.’

Easter 
Celebrations can be in April or May. 

Check with your local Greek church for exact dates of the Greek Orthodox Easter, since it changes every year.

See,  www.greecetravel.com/easter

Myths and Us

Myths and Us













My first trip to Greece was twelve years ago, and a very much younger me, and a much younger Takis, went to Rhodes to visit his brother and sister in law. While there I could not help but notice that we were never very far away from the ancient gods; hotels named Aphrodite, ships named Poseidon. We actually took a trip from Rhodes on a ship called Poseidon.

A Long Time Ago!

Sacred Numbers  

Takis left Egypt Sep 1955, on a P&O Oroton, arriving in Australia aged 21. He flew back to Greece after 50 yrs to begin work on The Project.

Julia flew from England to Australia on a ten-pound immigrants ticket in Jan, 1964 aged 23. She went to Greece in 2002, forty years later, and began the project with Takis in 2004.

Family Myths

Takis great grandfather George had left for Alexandria in Egypt in the mid 19C to work in a grocery store run by a Greek from his island. The family myth has it that he left the island as a bare foot young boy of twelve and worked for the grocer for a number of years, finally marrying the grocer’s daughter. The father gave his daughter a house in Lemnos as dowry when they married. The two had nine children and the family would come by boat every year to spend their summer on the island. The myth continues that they brought the children, maids, and two cows on the boat. And that when the boat was sighted by the locals they would run down to the short to accompany the household up the hill to their house. George had sailed from Lemnos around 1990 ages 12, and he returned to enlarge the house and build a chapel around 1920. He died when the youngest son was a baby, and leaving the family 200,000 gold sovereigns and the house in Lemnos.

(I often wonder what happened to all those gold sovereigns!)

Living a Greek Fantasy

It was in 2002 that Takis got the idea for our renovation project, and in 2004 we began work on his grandfather’s old house.


Hephaestus and Aphrodite were married, a marriage between of the god of practical technology and the goddess of beauty. We certainly hoped for a marriage between practical considerations and beauty when we began work on the house!

Living alongside these old myths you cannot help but sometimes slip into these other worlds. One mythic world for us was the world of the country squire on holiday in his country estate! Or we could switch that fantasy to the world of the returned merchant, living out his last days in his chosen exotic destination.

Of course the idea that I was Aphrodite and Takis Hephaestus is a complete Fantasy! 
But a fun one!!

The Project’s Mythic Cycles 

Ours was an adventure that was repeated each year. And like pilgrimages of old ours too involved a mythic cycle. We would leave Australia and arrive in Greece in Spring and return in Autumn to an Australian Spring. So it has been for us since 2002 when we began the project.

Destination Lemnos – A Mythic Island

‘What has happened to your boasting that you were the best? As you used to say once while in Lemnos... and while drinking sweet wine in overflowing glasses...promising that each of you would fight against a hundred Trojans, or was it only two?!’ The Iliad, Homer

Heroes of Yore

Jason needed riches to help fund a war against his uncle who had taken over his father’s lands. He decided to go into the Black Sea to a place where gold was to be found. Fifty young men joined him on his boat the Argo, among them was Hercules and Orpheus. The first port of call at the beginning of their journey was Lemnos,


As their boat neared the shore the sailors saw people coming out of the trees to meet them. The men held back at first thinking these were warriors as they were carrying bows and arrows, but then one shouted that he could only see women. They landed cautiously but the women greeted the men and invited them to stay.

There were only woman living on the island when Jason and his men arrived. The story is that the women had been so angry with their husbands, for taking new wives from among their slave girls that they had decided to take revenge and they killed their husbands.

The hospitality the men received was so agreeable that Jason’s men did not want to leave. Jason married the leader of the women, Hypsipili, and his men married other village women. Jason eventually had to remind them of their quest and they continued on their journey and had many adventures before returning to Lemnos and their families there.

Now, it so happens that our house stands close by this same bay; the bay where Jason and his Argonauts landed.

Takis, The Mythic Wanderer 

As the project to renovate his grandfather’s old house progressed I made links between Takis and the ancient heroes.

In my first blog I wrote that the stories that I’d like to share are repatriation stories, stories about ‘returning home’. And in particular I would be blogging about what it feels like for Greeks who decide to return to Greece – for various reasons.

Thus, I could not help but make a comparison with Odysseus.

‘That talkative, bald headed seaman came
(Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar)
From Troy’s doom-crimson shore,
And with great lies about his wooden horse
Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course.’
 James Elroy Flecker

Another reason was that...

When Odysseus got home from his adventure Penelope could not believe that her husband had really returned—she feared that it was perhaps some god in disguise and she tested him by ordering her servant Euryclea to move the bed in their wedding-chamber. Odysseus protested that this could not be done since he made the bed himself and he knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Hearing this Penelope finally accepted that he truly was her husband.

As for me, well when we married Takis made us a bed. Our bed was also made out of a special wood. Takis had been able to acquire a special assignment of Huon Pine. Now this wood is hard to obtain nowadays but it is a wood that is soft to work with and hardens with time.

The Huon Pine is a tall pine straight tree and because of its qualities it was used for masts in early Australia sailing ships.

Takis, The Mythic Worker

Later there were times when I saw Takis working in his workshop and the god Hephaestus came to mind.

I once even wrote to my grandchildren. ‘I have a secret to tell you. I have a nickname for Grandpa; it is the name of the god of this island, Hephaestus. I call him that because, like Hephaestus, Grandpa loves to work hard in his workroom. He even has a helper that is a bit like Cedelion, Hephaestus’ helper. Anestis is Grandpa’s helper. He comes everyday and the two of them make new windows and doors for our old house. Maybe I’m a bit like the goddess Demeter who was the goddess of the fields, because the garden is where I spend most of my time.’ 

Another reason was… 

Hephaestus made a three-legged table, representing the three-seasoned year, and the three aspects of woman, maiden, mother and crone.

And it so happened that one of the small tables Takis made for us is a three-legged table. At first this was our breakfast table, then it became my writing desk. I once wrote…

‘I sit writing at my computer at a three-legged table. This is a table made by Takis for our breakfast nook. It is made of beautiful Jarra, a hard-wearing eucalyptus wood from Western Australian. When the surface is polished the warm red tones and dark grain of this wood really glows.

Unfortunately, with only three legs it was hard to position so that it always looked unbalanced, and as we found ourselves more often sitting at our larger dining room table I moved it. Now I, in my crone phase, sit at my three-legged table-desk in front of an east-facing window. Here I open my computer each morning to read my emails and commence writing.’ 

The Making of Myths

The Making of Myths

I really love reading myths, especially when they are used to tell great tales in the way Homer used them, or, more recently, Tolkien or C S Lewis. However, I also love looking behind myths and speculating why they have been used and why they have become important.

For instance, did you know that a connection between various tartans and various Scottish clans is a fairly recent phenomenon? Or that white wedding, and most of what is connected to them, only caught on after Queen Victoria’s grand wedding?

Myths: a historical perspective… 

Myths are often used 

* to assert a new identity, or perhaps reinforce a regional or ethnic identity. 

Many people believe that each of the tartan (plaid) patterns worn by Scottish Highlanders corresponds to a particular clan and that kilts made of this fabric have served as the uniforms and emblems of that clan since time immemorial. As the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper pointed out that simply isn't true. It seems the whole concept of a distinct Highland culture was cooked up in the 19th century. 

Professor Halil Berktay from Turkey compares some new national myths to those of a child who believes that their parents couldn't possibly have had sex, and that they were brought to their parents by a stork. He says often these kind of ‘immaculate conception’ myths are applied the the birth of a nation.

* to appeal to a romantic, sacred, or class-connected, sensibility 

The custom of the "traditional" wedding (the elaborate church ceremony, the white dress, etc.) was concocted in the 19th century. It was Queen Victoria who had the first ‘white wedding’. For most of the history of Christendom a wedding  conducted at home without the benefit of clergy.

* to deflect attention from a national misdemeanor

Turkey became a modern state in 1923, assembled from the ethnic patchwork of what remained of the Ottoman Empire. The official version is kept under lock and key, and writers can still be punished for trying to open it. 






The Turkish grand narrative turns to a very large extent on how great powers of Imperialism kept hounding and persecuting the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire and that eventually those that were left had to wage a glorious nationalist struggle against them and against plots to partition them. But the Armenian genocide, the tragic uprooting and deportation of thousands, is not something that sits well with this narrative of Turkish victimisation and suffering.



* to extend a country’s borders and claim what once belonged to them

The Greater Greece

The early 20th-century attempts by modern Greece to extend its boundaries into Turkey and reclaim the reach of Ancient Greece, which has resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees, and bitter enmity between the two nations.

You can often hear expressed in Limnos a ‘Greater Greece’ worldview. This is not a modern world view, but as an Indian philosopher, Ashis Nandy, writes ‘All myths are morality tales’ and so such a view probably involves a refusal to separate a remembered telling of the past from its present day ethical meaning. But, sympathetically he points out that it may be important for a people ‘not to remember the past, objectively, clearly, or in its entirety.’ 

Myths: a modern questioning

Ancient History

A peaceful, matriarchal society or one that had human sacrifices?








The ancient palace of Knossos itself is instantly recognizable with its squat red columns, ceremonial staircases, and "throne rooms," it is the second most visited of all archaeological sites in Greece. But none of those columns are ancient; they are all restorations (or, in his words, ‘reconstitutions’) by Evans. In fact the palace ‘enjoys the dubious distinction of being one of the first reinforced concrete buildings ever erected on the island’!

Though the story of Knossos is an ongoing one. Later archaeologists at first questioned Evans constructions, and the latest archaeology actually has come to support some of Evans theories.

In Politics Today


We find that many current politicians are trying to reinvent myths. While many ordinary people are very wary of this there are some who are willing to be indoctrinated into a particular view of their country. The reason maybe that they are immigrants, uprooted peoples who want to flourish in a new homeland, others are just happy to embrace a gloriously successful history of the dominant culture.


Such a mythic histories is not necessarily ‘all bad’. Modern myths are sometimes a way to protect people from old wounds, which possibly should not be reopened just yet. They can also offer a way to accept sudden changes; a way of internalizing slowly a modern map of the world.

These histories, however, are better for occasionally being unpicked and the arts: films, novels, plays do just this. (I’m pretty sure that is what those good story tellers like Homer, Tolkien and Lewis were doing.)

The American Example 



















They have devised a mythology based upon their particular view of democracy and business. This is often mythologized as a ‘Christian view of the world’ but can, if told with great confidence, and without any sense of ambiguity, ignore anyone else’s stories and values. 

And so it is often America’s films, novels and plays that offer important and alternative views of their own myths.

Some Books and Articles

Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History
Ashis Nandy, The Romance of the State
Cathy Gere, Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism
Trevor-Roper’s essay, ‘The Invention of History: The Highland Tradition
Sabrina Tavernise, article in the New York Times. ‘In the Bosporus, a Scholar Tells of Sultans, Washerwomen and Snakes’

What do I mean by Shabby-Chic?

What do I mean by Shabby-chic?

Ten years ago Takis and I owned a unit in Melbourne and a holiday shack three hours out of Melbourne by a lake.



The Seaside Shack
















While Takis and I loved the shack we decided to go ahead and try to purchase his grandfather’s home in Greece. We realized that this meant we would have to make some changes to our living arrangements in Australia. In the end we sold the shack, and let the unit, and we bought a cheaper, family home in the country but close to our family. We had by now retired and we wanted to be able to visit them and have them visit us when we were in Australia. It was sad selling the shack but at the time Greece called us!



                              The House in Greece

This has meant that over the last ten years we have lived in a city unit, a seaside shack, a mountain hideaway, and a house of a Greek island. And, since retiring, we have found ourselves very busy, moving furniture, and decorating and furnishing houses. It has been a lot of hard work!

Because of our circumstances the shabby-chic decorating has provided us with a sound style basis. It is also a style I like. 

While I love looking at pictures of modern and spare homes, I do not think I could live in one. 

I’d miss:

*   Glimpses of a mysterious and muddled garden through the windows. 

Though I have to add, this is not as ‘casual’ an approach as it may appear. The planned ‘overgrown’ garden is a conceit. It, of course, needs a lot of attention, perhaps even more than a neat clipped and graveled one. 

The very small balcony of our Melbourne Unit provided our outdoor living space, and garden.

Now the outdoor furniture sits in a larger outdoor living space where there is enough room for all the family to visit for a BBQ. 

*  The excitement of numerous points of interest that catch my attention wherever I look, and a sense of history, if not of ‘the historical’ at lest of  a personal sense of history.

This is especially noticeable in the Greek House, with its collection of things from the family's past, and items that we have brought with us from Australia.

* The feeling of malleability; that this is a place where things can be moved about now and then.

The dresser in the shack, decorated with blue plates

The dresser with a collection of 'brown ware' in our present kitchen

Over the years I've realised I feel comfortable living with…

* The very real presence of greenery outside, that tumbles into the house.

* The walls and the tops filled with mementos and natural objects, but with a real sense of artistry

* Personal objects intermingling with old and new objects, in a mix and match that works

Shabby-chic for me is beautiful and very practical. 

It is …

Colour Adaptable 

Beside the furniture arrangement changes a new coat of paint on an old chair, a new batch of cushions, a change of curtain arrangement can update the setting.


Touches of blue certainly suited our seaside shack. And blue looks good on some Greek Islands, though on our northern island I chose to keep shutters the traditional maroon and work around that colour scheme.

Position Adaptable

A change may be motivated by a change in colours; to suit the season or the place. It may be because of a change the use of a particular room.

                                      
The bed Takis made for our shack, with a view of the water and touches of blue on the veranda.

The same bed with a different view of trees, and touches of green outside.

In our houses, as the children left home we've made certain fairly big changes to layouts.
A room that was once a dining room became a study, and we made a bedroom into another study so that now Takis and I have a study each. We also now entertain and eat our regular meals at the large kitchen table, an arrangement that suits our present lifestyle.

My desk in the unit, crammed in a space between kitchen and living room

The same desk in a room of my own.

Not Expensive

I think the greatest joy for me is that my space can be my ‘art gallery’. I can always move items, update and improve, in ways that need not be expensive. 

And, if I had to say just 3 things, Shabby-chic means

A Background of Cream - Giving an Airy Sense Space

I’ve found that cream – light cream not yellow-cream – works well as a background colour on which other colours can be arranged. Although I’m often tempted to try a coloured or wall papered wall I hold back, knowing that this will ‘fix’ the contents.

                                      The cream tiles in the Greek bathroom.

The cream paintwork in the Greek House

Comfortable Malleability 

It is a flexible style that allows you to take items from one house to another. Or move things from one room to another.

There are problems of course. Husbands are not all that fond of changes, so I don’t move the furniture every year!

Also I try to move paintings when he’s not around, and quietly paint over any holes left behind, so that he is not ‘discomfabulated’.

Being All About You

It is a style of decorating a house that reflects your family's past and present interests.
And while having many items on display means more dusting I've found it’s worth it.