Ignoring Sunday’s Olympic competition across the Greek capital, many Athenians instead focused on solemn, centuries-old rituals marking the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, a major holy day for Orthodox Christians.
Only a single convenience store remained open Sunday along a usually busy road in Menidi, a working-class suburb west of Athens. Taped to the wall behind the cash register was a depiction of the Virgin Mary, whom Greeks call Panayia or Theotokos.
At an Athens church, dressed in the colorful polo shirt of an Athens 2004 volunteer, Constantinos Zacharoulis reverently lit a yellow candle, crossed himself and pecked his lips against Byzantine-style icons of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints.
Zacharoulis, 40, said he had returned to the city Saturday from his hometown of Lamia in northern Greece because he is a volunteer at an Olympic archery venue.
“All the people of Athens have gone to pray in their birthplaces,” he said. “If it were not for my work at the Olympics, I would still be [in Lamia].”
Contrary to foreign reports suggesting that many residents had skipped town expressly to avoid the Games, most Athenians are just doing what they do every August: returning to their native villages in rural Greece or taking vacations along the seacoast.
Normally a noisy, overcrowded city, Athens is largely abandoned during most of this month. The quietest days fall around the Aug. 15 religious feast day marking the death of the Virgin Mary.
After World War II and the civil war that followed the Axis occupation of Greece, villagers poured into Athens in search of work, erecting the white concrete apartment blocks that sprawl up the mountainsides that hem in the city.
Even those who were born in Athens love to go back to their ancestral homes for Easter and for the festivals that accompany summer feast days.
This phenomenon is generating mixed results for Olympic organizers. The atrocious traffic that many feared would mar the Games has not materialized.
But the annual exodus from Athens also partly explains why ticket sales remain far short of the goal organizers had set.
Though Greece is the birthplace of the Games, a more recent innovation–Orthodox Christianity–is very closely linked to the locals’ sense of self and everyday life.
“The Byzantine Greeks elaborated on antiquity and passed that on to us,” said Gerasimos Pagoulatos, an archeologist at the Byzantine Museum of Athens.
“It’s one culture that has developed over thousands.”
Many who remained in Athens on Sunday flocked to Orthodox churches such as Kimissistis Theotokou Kolokinthou parish, in a gritty inner-city neighborhood. The parish dates to the 16th Century, when the Greeks were subjects of the Ottoman Turks and Orthodoxy helped preserve the national identity.
The bearded, bespectacled parish priest was happy to explain his flock’s devotion to Mary. He requested anonymity, though, because he believed a priest being quoted in a newspaper would not convey proper Christian humility.
“The Virgin Mary is not only the mother of Jesus Christ, but also the mother of all Christians and of all mankind,” he said. “Every one of us feels that she is our own mother.
“In every difficult circumstance our people face, whether in their families or in a time of national crisis, we place our hope in Panayia.”
Orthodox Christians often direct their prayers to the Virgin Mary and to saints instead of God, the priest said.
“The common people find it easier to address someone who was a human,” he said. “We know Panayia and the saints were people like us, with their own problems. Through spritual struggles and thanks to divine grace, they overcame human nature and achieved holiness.”
A ritual funeral procession for the Virgin Mary was held Saturday evening through the streets near the church and many other parishes named in honor of Christ’s mother.
Sunday morning after the liturgy, parishioners stood in line to kiss icons of the Virgin Mary. Gypsies in front of the church hawked 6-foot-tall candles. “Two candles for one euro,” one seller shouted.
At a table set up next to the church, a woman sold silver representations of arms, legs and hearts. Believers tie the pendants with bows to the frames of church icons to ask for divine intervention in curing ailments.
Yorgos Akrivos, 5, begged his mother to buy him laminated cards displaying icons of saints from the religious curio stand.
“I want my son to be a priest,” said Yorgos’ mother, housekeeper Eleni Akrivou. “Not a priest of money and power, but a priest of miracles, or at least a good Christian man who helps people, like a doctor.”
With the passage of what he called “the Easter of summer,” the parish priest will serve as one of 20 Orthodox chaplains at the Olympic Village.
Zacharoulis, the Olympic archery volunteer, said he sees some parallels between the Games and his faith.
“The Olympics are not a religion, of course, but they are an important way toward friendship and world peace,” he said. “If we always did as we were told to do here at church, wars would cease.”
