Breathing the incense-scented air and listening to the priest’s plaintive chant, we sat in darkness, lit only by the glimmer of the “eternal flame” – ferried over from Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre earlier that day.
At midnight, the black-clad priest brandished the lantern aloft: “Xristos anesti!” “Christ has risen!” he cried. As if on cue, bells pealed wildly and firecrackers fizzed through the darkened streets of Palekastro in east Crete.
“Alithos anesti!” “Truly He is Risen,” the crowd replied before lining up to light their candles from the flame, then scurrying home to make the smoky black cross on the lintel above their front doors, to bring protection for the following year.
Unlike Easter in the UK, which is generally a more low-key affair, Greece’s Orthodox version of this ancient spring festival is one of the country’s biggest celebrations. It generally takes place in April (this year on the 24th) when Bermuda buttercups bloom bright in the olive groves, days are longer and warmer, and family members scattered around the world come home to celebrate with loved ones. “It’s like Christmas and New Year rolled into one,” a Greek pizza parlour owner from New York who was in Crete to see his 80-year-old mother told me, as we toasted each other with raki. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Although most of the larger resorts are closed at this time of the year on the islands, many smaller hotels and more authentic local restaurants are open. Since there are fewer crowds and the weather is generally wonderful – warm enough for T-shirts but still cool enough for hiking – it’s one of my favourite times to visit.
The first time I joined in these celebrations on Crete I’d been worried that I’d be imposing on what is essentially a family occasion. I soon discovered, however, that hospitable Greeks were more than happy to welcome me – a passing stranger – to their tables which were generally set up in the street outside their houses, groaning beneath the weight of grilled meat and meze snacks, and baskets of crimson eggs. Dyed to symbolise the blood of Christ, eggs are used for the tsougrisma, an egg-y version of conkers where the “weapons” are clutched in fists rather than held on strings. “Filoxenia – the love of strangers – is in our DNA,” one reveller said as she handed me a plate loaded with the traditional mastic-flavoured sweet bread tsoureki.
From solemn, candle-lit processions on Good Friday to long, lazy lunches of butter-soft lamb, slow-roasted over charcoals on Easter Sunday – at the tables of local tavernas or in people’s homes – the main rituals of Orthodox Easter remain the same across the country, but there are countless regional variations. In a quest to see how other islands celebrated Greece’s biggest festival, I decided to check out Easter on Corfu.
Mentioned in the Odyssey as the birthplace of blind musician Demodocus whose skill made Homer weep, Corfu is home to Greece’s first philharmonic orchestra, which was created in 1840 when Queen Victoria prohibited the participation of the British army band in the island’s Orthodox religious events. The island’s Easter celebrations inevitably involve a lot of music.
Corfu now has about 17 orchestras and when I arrived on Good Friday I had difficulty deciding which epitaphios procession to follow – with each carrying a symbolic casket that represents Christ’s coffin. I finally headed out along candlelit cobbled streets behind the red-uniformed members of the Kapodistrias philharmonic band, who thudded solemnly ahead, plumed hats waving like feather dusters in time to Chopin’s funeral march.
On Saturday I followed crowds to Spianada square in the city’s old town to discover this Ionian Island’s most spectacular tradition. At 11am, as bells rang out for what’s known locally as “the first resurrection”, on high balconies along the main square – and along the neighbouring pedestrian sidestreets known as cantounia – dozens of Corfiots emerged, dragging giant, water-filled clay pots called botides, and hurled them to the streets below, with cries of “Opa!” and “Xristos anesti!”
As the red clay pots exploded on the glistening marble pavement, the crowd howled and cheered loudly. “It’s said that this first started with the Venetians,” one pot thrower told me. “When they occupied the island from the 14th to the late 18th century, they would throw old and useless objects from their windows to celebrate the new year, but we do it to worship God.”
My final Easter experience, before Covid put the kibosh on Greek celebrations until this year, was on Tinos. A 20-minute ferry-hop away from Mykonos, this tiny member of the Cyclades islands is renowned for its marble sculptors. The author Lawrence Durrell described Tinos as “the Lourdes of modern Greece” because of its Panagia Evangelistria church, which attracts pilgrims from all over the country, and because Easter on this 194 sq km island is celebrated with particular fervour.
On Friday evening, the church bells began their slow, rolling funeral toll and the Epitaphios of St Nicholas headed for island capital Chora’s tiny port, where the bearers – surrounded by a swarm of candlelit fishing boats – waded out into the freezing waters accompanied by the priest in full regalia. Then, on Saturday evening, as the bells rang out for the Resurrection, parishes across the island competed in making the loudest explosion with their “trombones” – traditional fireworks packed with gunpowder that look like old wooden muskets. “The trombones are so loud that we usually ask someone who is hard of hearing to light them,” said Maria, an inhabitant of the nearby mountain village of Kardiani who I met while watching the raucous spectacle. The last explosion faded and we hurried together through smoky streets to Chora where tavernas had thrown open their doors to celebrate.
Maria invited me to sit with her family at one of the long trestle tables that tavernas had set up for the occasion.
A musician began to play lively nisiótika island songs, a firecracker whistled high overhead, a donkey honked loudly and a gust of warm air riffled the paper tablecloth. “This is what the resurrection is all about,” said Maria, as we tucked into our magiritsa, the traditional broth made from lamb’s liver, lungs, head and intestines topped with avgolemono (egg and lemon) sauce that’s always served at Easter. “This is the real rebirth – when spring is in the air and winter is finally dead.”
