Dean Christakos« Back in Thessaloniki | Main | Today in Interesting Numbers »
May 21, 2006
How I Celebrated My Name Day
Alternate title: I can't believe what I just saw tonight
This evening, from Thessaloniki, I travelled to the town of Langadas, which is about 15 miles north of the city. A small group of people who live there are descendents of those who used to live in the town of Kosti, a Greek village on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast. After the Balkan wars of the early 20th century, these Greek villagers migrated to northern Greece, where they now live. They brought with them an odd tradition-- every May 21st, the feast day of Ss. Constantine & Helen, the patron saints of their village, they perform a firewalking ceremony while holding icons of their village. The tradition holds that in the 13th century, the town's church was on fire, and they rushed in to save the icons and escaped miraculously unharmed. Quite possibly the tradition dates back to pagan times. In any case, while the ceremony used to take place in the town square, the church became upset enough about it that the Metropolitan Bishop has forbidden it from taking place in the center of town, and it now occurs in the outskirts, starting around 9, with preparations beginning around 7 in the evening.
(For potential tourists: from Thessaloniki, you take the 27 bus westbound to the Stavropoli Terminal and then grab the 83 bus to Langadas. The ceremony takes place near the last stop of the 83 bus, though your best bet, in case the festival has moved, is to go to the main square of Langadas and ask someone where the festival is being held. After it's all over, it's almost midnight, so grab a taxi back to Thessaloniki, which cost me 15 Euros)
The name for these firewalkers is the "Anastenarides" -- "sighers" or "moaners" -- referring to their cries in song while they dance on the coals.
Pictures and more explanations after the jump...
The people begin by dancing around in circles indoors before the icons, perhaps working themselves into a trance:
After a procession around the staging area, the people light a bonfire:
Eventually this turns into coals on which the firewalkers dance to the Greek music and hypnotic drums while holding their icons:
Afterwards, the anastenarides went back to their trance-like dancing indoors:
I have a video of this last dance-- I didn't have the presence of mind to take videos of the firewalking itself, though plenty of pictures are available at my photos archive.
All in all, this involved about 3 hours of waiting and 30 minutes of dancing, but amazing, simply amazing. One would expect such an odd tradition to take place in an isolated mountain town, but actually it occurs in a small street in a suburb, with a group of people who've maintained their tradition for centuries.
Posted by Dean at May 21, 2006 6:58 PM
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