This week, the week before the Easter celebrations is known in Greece as Megali Evdomada, Holy Week or Great Week. Today is Megali Pempti, Holy Thursday, the day that traditionally the people of Greece hard boil and die their eggs the colour of the blood of Christ - red.
Tomorrow is Good Friday, a day of respect and mourning for Christ. In the evening is the service of remembrance when the priest takes down the icon of Christ off the cross, wraps it in linen and places it in the casket. The casket is called the Epitaphion which has, this week, been decked with flowers by local women and girls. After the service, the Epitaphion is carried around the village or town as in a funeral procession. Back at the church the Epitaphion is often raised high over the doorway so that the congregation can pass underneath it. To pass between the dead Christ and the ground is considered to be very lucky.
On Saturday, the fast that so many take just leading up to Easter is continued. In the late evening towards midnight there is the Church service that celebrates the rising of Christ. At midnight all light in the church is extinguished. In the darkness at the alter the priest turns with a single candle crying ‘Christos Anesti’, Christ is risen. All the people have brought their unlit candle to the church to receive the light of Christ, brought all the way from the cave of Christ’s nativity in Jerusalem, from the priest. They try to carry their light back with them to their house which will bring luck for the family for the year. Also they make a cross over the doorway in candle smoke to bless the house.
Then the great bonfire is lit as well as crackers and maybe even gunshots may be heard as the celebrations begin. Here in Crete a guy is dressed and burned on the fire as Judas. Now that midnight has passed the fast is over and meat and so on can be eaten again. In the morning of Holy Sunday the spits are fired up and whole lambs are roasted. After the meal one takes the red eggs and cracks them against the next person’s egg saying Christos anesti. If your egg is the last to crack then you will have very good luck.
We call this festival Easter but for the Greeks it is called Pasxa. This literally means the passing over of Christ from here on earth to the Kingdom of Heaven. Greek Easter is often on days different to our own date of Easter. The reason for this is that the date of Greek or Orthodox Easter is still calculated on the Julian calendar, which is some 13 days behind the more modern Gregorian calendar. Greek Orthodox Easter should fall on the Sunday that follows the first full moon after the spring or vernal equinox. Also Greek Easter is always after the Jewish Passover.
I guess that you all know by now that the Island of Crete has a huge number of wild flowers. Many are found only in Crete. It is in the springtime that these flowers mostly burst out into their individual beauty. And that is when I’m on the prowl with my trusty camera. These pictures were taken over the last few days . . .
These are the beautiful pink Cretan Orchids that simply burst out of the ground and are soon in wonderful colour.
This is a fine wild lily - hey, I’m not a botanist, I just love the flowers.
Here we have the superb wild lupins that grow wonderfully in Crete. I have seen olive groves full of them.
This is the splendid, almost silk like, wild iris that I have only seen in Crete. They are large flowers that open with a soft delicacy and last for a few days when they die and a second one, brand new, opens on the same stem. Enjoy.
Plakias is a nice fairly small beach resort in the south of Crete. All summer long there people sunbathing and a plethora of beach umbrellas. In the early spring, in March, I took this extraordinary picture of the sun shining on Plakias whilst the sky above was black and about to break out into a storm.
It seems to me that only in Crete do you get the fine light to take photographs like these.
I just had an email from John Sooklaris that said:
Ray, If I had realized that these movies that I sat and watched when I was a kid, and fell asleep to, as my father would show them to all of our relatives, time and time again, would create such interest in the world, I would have posted them a long time ago when my father was alive. Alas, I am happy with the interest that we have received by people like yourself, and my mother is, no doubt, flattered by the interest as well. Yes, I just happened to visit your site yesterday, before receiving this message and even changed the one about Akrotiri in which you said I was confused. I wasn’t really confused, but just ignorant to all of the places in these videos. With the help of people, like yourself, we’ll get this all straightened out so we can properly inform our viewers. But I did take your word for it and changed it to the Agia Triada in Akrotiri. I will read your other comments on the other videos as well, as I do care about the quality of information that I post. Thanks for your help, as I continue to post the remaining videos from that time. John Sooklaris
Here is the latest video from John - part 1 0f 2:
I don’t recognise the first memorial, but the second after a minute or so is certainly the memorial south of Hania on the Omalos road at the Alikiarnos junction. This is a memorial to those dead in the last war when the Germans occupied Crete. There is listed the names of those killed in around five local villages. In the basement of this memorial is a glass ossuary containing many skulls of those killed, each with a bullethole over the right ear.
Later in this movie I see the hospital in Rethymnon which was newly built in those days. The big ceremony/festival near the end of the movie is certainly in Eleftheriou Square (Freedom Square) in Iraklion. That’s the one with all the crowds and marching soldiers. If you watch carefully you will see the Iraklion Morosini Fountain twice.
Here is part 2 of 2 of this film.
The first part of this film is obviously a trip eastwards from Iraklion towards Agios Nicholas. The first part of the film is a stop at St Georges church in the gorge of Selinari near the village of Vrahassi. I remember this place on the first bus I took when I arrived in Crete going to Agios Nicholas. No Cretan can pass this shrine without stopping. The whole busload got out and said a quiet prayer here.
Most of the rest of the film is taken in Agios Nicholas - you can clearly see the small lake with the boats that connects to the sea. The final part of the film is I feel taken on a trip to the Lassiti Plateau - you can see the windpumps/windmills.
If any of you out there can do better than me and identify more of the places in the film, of which there may be several, then I and John would be grateful. Please post a comment.
I would appreciate it and so would John Sooklaris. In memory of his father who took these great films.
This is another of Anthony Sooklaris’s movies published by his son John Sooklaris.
I think that John is a little confused about the whereabouts of this movie but I see it clearly as at the monastery Agia Triada, the monastery of the Holy Trinity in Akrotiri. I don’t know if the day was a special celebration or just a welcome for the Cretan Americans but it all happened in 1961.
Here is what John had to say about this movie: “Akrotiri Chordaki Sternes 1961
This video takes place in what appears to be Chordaki Akrotiri Crete Greece, and then moves on to Sternes at the home of Kosta Verganelakis. Early on the video, I believe I recognized Themistocle Tsouchlarakis as well as Antoni Panagirakis who is the dancing Chorofilaka.
Beyond these few faces, I don’t know anyone else in the video. I would love to hear your comments and hear from you if you recognize anyone, the villages, the reason for the get-together, and anything else that you would like to share.
Because I noticed a female lyratzida, I selected the music of Tasoula to serenade you while you watch this movie clip.”
This next video is taken in Iraklion in 1961. It has been posted by John Sooklaris but the man behind the camera is his father Anthony Sooklaris. They visited Crete on a ship sponsored by the Pancretan Society of America in 1961.
This film shows Iraklion very well. You clearly see the old market in Iraklion with all the butchers and fruit and cheese shops unlike now when it is mostly tourist shops. You then have some clear shots of Eleftheriou Square (Freedom Square where I used to work in 1968 on) and the Morosini fountain.
In the closing shots of the film you see a man walking across the road. This is the later very famous musician Nikos Xylouris the great singer of Crete.
Here are Johns words about the movie: “O Pramateftis. While this video clip is more the life and times of Heraklion, Crete, in 1961, it does tell a story that Mountaki so eloquently tells in this story of the poor peddler. You will see peddlers selling their wares at or near the Agora. I just love the shot of the traffic cop.
Anthony Sooklaris so keenly captures the moment in this amazing footage of what life was like. Make sure to catch the traffic cop. It’s a classic solution to a then “new” problem of how to deal with more cars on streets that were once more populated by horses and donkeys, than by motor vehicles.
It was a more simple life, and it will no doubt remind us of fond memories of this most precious past.”
Here is the movie:
Enjoy, but see also how much this island has changed in 47 years.
In 1961 a cruise ship called the Queen Frederica set out from the United States to visit Crete. On board were a large number of American Cretans coming to see again - or see for the first time, perhaps, their homeland.
Luckily, one man had what we used to call a Super 8 movie camera. The kind that takes 8mm wide film that you have to have developed professionally. He took some film of the trip and what they saw and where they went in Crete. These old movies, amateur movies but well filmed have now been converted by a man called John Sooklaris in America, and submitted via Youtube for me to display here on my Cretan website. John, thanks for doing this, these films are quite unique and priceless.
The first movie that I am putting on here is of the city of Hania and around in 1961. This was five years before I came to Crete over forty years ago. The film is wonderful, it shows the squares and the Agora and some of the beach between the city and the Akrotiri peninsular. It is ten minutes long. Remember that in 1961, Hania was the capital of Crete. It was changed to Iraklion in 1975. So here is the movie in the days before tourism.
I hope that you enjoyed it and I will be posting more of this 1961 trip very soon.
This is another clip from Zorba, the film starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates, where Zorba dances until he is exhausted. In this clip we see the real attempt to display the exuberance of Cretans.
Thanks for all your responses on the last clip. This clip tells more of the story.
I really love this clip from Zorba the Greek. It is the final moments in the film following the enormous disaster that Zorba caused running logs from the monastery on top of the hill down to the sea. The clip is taken on Stavros bay in the Akrotiri peninsular. Anthony Quinn is Zorba and Alan Bates is the English guy.
I wrote an article a while ago called Romiosini, the soul of Greece and I don’t know how many of you read that article. But it was for real. I spent some time back in the sixties and seventies working on what I had discovered as the soul of Greece. For English people coming to live here I felt that it was an idea that they should understand.
And I feel that you should try to make an effort to understand this. To help, I have added this fragment.
