Good Friday

Church bells, Santorini

Starting at midnight last night, all the churches in the city, in each neighborhood, started ringing their bells. One gong, of varying notes, every 5 seconds. Continuously. It is a cool concept, but I am going slowly mad, and wondering if this will continue until Sunday?! :)

Tonight I guess there is a procession starting in five different points of the city, with priests carrying caskets, all coming together in the main square. Like most holidays and events, no one seems to know what time this is happening. So I probably won't see it. However, tomorrow night at midnight (Saturday night) is the traditional candle services that I WILL see.

Going to join a few friends around 9 tomorrow night for some more significant Eastery things, and then we'll head to the main church in the city. It will be packed out, with people filling the whole square outside, all holding special candles that they have purchased this week for this purpose. At midnight the priest will light his candle and those near him, and they will light those behind them...the light will spread through the church, and then out into the city, and then everyone walks home with their candles lit.

Then they start lighting fireworks at your feet, which means it's time to run for your life and get out of there as soon as possible.

One interesting thing...I am assuming in America right now they are having all kinds of specials on the history channel and the networks about the reliability and validity of the resurrection and truth of Jesus' claims because of the Easter season (or at least they did last week). Here, they show movies on the life of Christ and other religious programs. Such a marked difference. A homework assignment of one of Voula's daughters this week was to chart out the events of Passion week! Scholars research this and write articles on it...and her 10 year old had to somehow come up with what happened each day of the week! Ha. In true Greek mother fashion, Voula spent hours calling her connections at the Bible college and doing research online until she came up with the model outline for Naya to turn in. :)