"Sacred holiday overshadows Greek Games"
By Angie Leventis
ATHENS, Greece - Church bells rang throughout Greece on Sunday, calling people to celebrate the day of the Virgin Mary, a national holiday and one of the holiest days of the year for locals.
While the festivities of the 2004 Olympic Games continued, thousands left Athens to commemorate the Koimisis Tis Theotokou, or the falling asleep of the Mother of God, on mountaintop
monasteries and in their ancestral villages.
Bakeries, clothing stores, markets and restaurants close to honor the day the faithful believe the mother of Jesus Christ rose to heaven without dying. They say she was so holy, death couldn't touch her. She simply fell asleep.
Believers take the day that death was defeated to celebrate life. Away from the commotion of the Olympic tourists, it was a day of praying, roasting whole lambs and dancing to the melody of the bouzouki.
Up in Mount Parintha, about 20 miles outside of Athens, hundreds flocked to a monastery called Tis Panagias tou Klisteon, or the Virgin Mary's enclosure. It was built roughly 1,000 years ago, after a shepherd led by a blinding light from the sky found a religious icon, a painted image of the Virgin Mary, buried in a crevice in the mountain.
The exact spot is on another mountain peak about 500 feet away and is memorialized today with icons and candles.
Demetrios Panagiris, 80, of Filodelphia, Greece, has made pilgrimages to the area five times. He said a nun travels on a pulley from the
monastery to the memorial every night to keep a candle lit in remembrance of the light that once drew the shepherd there.
Katerina Dardagiannopou, 25, of Athens, crossed herself and kissed the icon of the Virgin Mary, which is kept inside the
monastery. She said a quick prayer and looked out over the edge of the mountain.
"Now I feel calm," she said in Greek.
The head monk, Elder Makarios, told visitors stories of miracles that have taken place there.
During World War II, Greeks hid from German Soldiers in the mountains. One mother was said to have held her crying baby's
mouth so tight that she asphyxiated her child.
They say she brought him into the church, the priest read prayers for those who had passed away and the baby rose from the dead.
Five years ago, a woman brought her 9 year-old son, whose arm was paralyzed, to pry before the icon. The boy wandered off, and his worried mother shouted for him.
"Here I am, here I am," the little boy yelled back. It is said that he threw his arms in the air as he called to her.
At the foot of the mountain, a little village called Hassia was alive with preparation for the festivities of the evening. Lamb carcasses - head and all - hung in the window of the butcher shop, ready to be roasted on the spits that dot the back yards of every home.
Yirogos Rhodes, 47, tended two lambs and two six-foot-long skewers of meat and vegetables, with four generations of his family waiting for the carving to begin.
Despite the feast to come, he was a bit sad. The influx of American tourists coming to visit Greece for the Olympics reminded him of his own relatives who left for the
Unitized States at the turn of the century. They changed their last name, took on American customs and never looked back.
On a great holiday like this, he said, it was distressing to not see or hear from extended family.
"Remember, remember," he said in Greek. "Don't forget these things."
News Tribune staff writer Angie Leventis is in Greece, her ancestral homeland, to cover the color and culture surrounding the Olympic games.
Angie Leventis:
angie.leventis@mail.tribnet.com
____________________________ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: "Sacred holiday overshadows Greek Games" by Angie Leventis (angie.leventis@mail.tribnet.com) The News Tribune Tacoma, Washington Page A-1 August 16, 2004
