MYTHS AND FESTIVALS

The Gods of Olympus

For centuries before the birth of Christ, the ancient Greeks worshiped the gods and goddesses who were said to live on Mount Olympus. These twelve were the most important:

Zeus: king of the gods who ruled over the world and the deities. He punished those who violated the laws and was accompanied by an eagle carrying his thunderbolts.
Hera: wife of Zeus and Queen of Olympus. Protectress of women and marriage.
Poseidon: god of the sea, rivers and springs, wielding the power of storms and winds and over the fate of sailors and ships.
Demeter: sister of Zeus and mother of Persephone, Queen of Hades. She was goddess of sewing and the harvest.
Hestia: elder sister of Zeus. As goddess of the hearth she was the protecting divinity of the home and family life.
Ares: god of war who fought for the sheer love of fighting and had none of the gentle qualities of the other gods.
Hephaestus: god of fire and volcanoes who was the blacksmith of the gods and builder of their palaces and weapons.
Aphrodite: goddess of beauty and love. Her symbols were the dove, ram, dolphin, swan, tortoise and the rose.
Athena: goddess of wisdom, and of war and peace. As Zeus's favorite daughter she shared power over storms and lightning. Athens, Greece's capital, bears her name.
Apollo: the sun god personified both the mental illumination and the physical phenomenon of light. He was also the god of music and song.
Artemis: Zeus's daughter and the twin sister of Apollo was goddess of the forest and the hunt and often danced with the Nymphs of the woods.
Hermes: messenger of the gods who was revered as the god of commerce, as well as of wind and swiftness, gymnastics, numbers and the alphabet.

Christmas and New Year
The two major religious holidays are, Christmas and Easter, and these are celebrated all over Greece with customs that are universal in character, but differ in detail from place to place. Christmas has overtaken New Year's Day as the major occasion for gifts, parties and decorated fir trees. In Greece the traditional red-robed and white-bearded Santa Claus appears in the guise of Saint Basil, and on both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve the children go from house to house singing carols and collecting drachmas.

Especially in the countryside, preparations on Christmas Eve center around the food table, featuring the turkey or the pig which the family has been fattening since mid-summer. On Christmas Eve, too, every housewife without fail bakes a 'Christopsomo', literally a 'Christ-bread'. This is made in large sweet loaves of various shapes, with decorated images carved on the crust, usually representing some aspect of the family's life and work.

Thus, in Macedonia a farmer's Christmas loaf will often be decorated with lambs, kids or a sheepfold. Also it is unthinkable to forget the poor on Christmas Day. At Koroni in Messinia, for example, the first slice from the Christmas loaf is given to the first beggar who happens to pass by the house. Another common custom is to pour a few drops of oil or wine over the hearth. This is a survival from libations of the ancient Greeks to the hearth whose symbol was the Goddess Hestia.

On New Year's Eve family reunions and office parties share the custom of cutting the 'vasilopita', or 'Basil-cake', for good luck in the coming year. Like the western Christmas pudding the vasilopita contains a coin, usually a gold sovereign, which is said to bring luck for the rest of the year to whomever finds it in his slice.

Easter
Easter is the most significant holiday in Greece, deeply embedded in the conscience of the Greek people.

The candlelight processions of Good Friday, the celebratory fireworks at midnight on Saturday, and Easter Sunday feast and many other traditions, make this springtime celebration a very colorful, festive and distinctively Greek Orthodox holiday.

There are many rituals involved in the celebration of Easter. Churches are filled with worshippers and Lent is observed. On Holy Thursday, the Easter eggs are died red, the braided bread is baked. Good Friday is a day of mourning during which symbolic funeral services, commemorating the death of Christ, are conducted. In a solemn ceremony, the Sacred Icon of Christ is laid in a bier, adorned with flowers and garlands by the young girls of the parish. During the evening service, the bier is carried through the streets with the whole congregation following, carrying lit candles.

Late Saturday evening, the faithful flock to church, dressed in their best clothes, especially young children wearing their Easter outfits and carrying white or ribbon festooned "lambades" (candles), bought by their godparents. Inside the church, the lighting is low and precisely at midnight all lights are turned off. Then, the priest appears, chanting "Come receive the light", calling on the congregation to light their candles from his own. The flame is passed from candle to candle and the church is flooded with the "Holy Light", while people kiss each other, chanting with the priest "Christos Anesti" - "Christ is Risen."

At home, the table is set with baskets of deep red eggs, signifying the blood of Christ, "tsoureki", the special Easter bread, as well as the traditional Easter soup "mageiritsa". The meal usually starts with a favorite Easter tradition: everyone takes turns at an "egg-cracking" contest, each hoping that their own egg will be the strongest and make them the winner. The following day, Easter Sunday, is entirely devoted to feasting and enjoyment, with the festivities revolving around the sumptuous Easter dinner and the spit-roasted lamb. The celebration, singing, drinking and dancing continue for many hours in the outdoors to the sounds of music and merriment.