| Celebrations of the churches |
The celebration is being prepared one or two days in advance. If the church belongs to the municipality, the women of the village take care of the preparations, but if it privately owned, the owners undertake that task. After the cleaning-up of the church, they decorate the icons with flowers. The most beautiful flowers are used for the decoration of the main icon of the Saint of the church. In some churches, the street leading to the church is decorated by rosemary branches. The “panigiri”, which is actually the food served to the crowd, is prepared inside the “panigirospito”, a building next to the church, specially built for that purpose. Men wearing long white smocks and white hats prepare the traditional fava, which is served in white plastic bowls. The menu may include also cod-fish, traditional tomato-balls, pickled caper, bread, cheese and tomatoes. And always the Santorinian wine is in abundance! Some years ago, those celebrations were followed by musicians playing local music with violins and “laouto” (=traditional stringed instrument), while others were singing and dancing until the next morning! Especially, during the old times, those celebrations were major social events, as they were a great opportunity for the people to meet each other and have fun! For this reason, they were organizing numerous celebrations over the year and, still, many of them continue to exist... |
