{"id":5402,"date":"2025-04-20T03:40:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T07:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/?p=5402"},"modified":"2025-04-22T09:39:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T13:39:40","slug":"a-greek-easter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/2025\/04\/20\/a-greek-easter\/","title":{"rendered":"Easter Celebrations in Argostoli"},"content":{"rendered":"

Easter is the most important holiday of the year in Greece. Friday evening we watched a dirge-like procession as church leaders and parishioners carried epitaphs (tapestry with images of the death of Christ) around the city. There was a marching band;<\/p>\n

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Philharmonic Band in Argostoli<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

and three flowered floats with epitaphs.<\/p>\n

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Flowered Float in Good Friday Procession<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the end of the procession Friday night, crowds gathered in the main square for a religious service.<\/p>\n

Saturday at noon, a crowd gathered to watch the Pottery Breaking Ceremony<\/b>. Painted and decorated clay jugs (\u201cBotides\u201d), filled with water, are thrown from balconies and smashed on the streets below, with visitors and residents gathering to watch. The smashing symbolizes Christ’s resurrection from the dead (or maybe it’s just a fun pagan ritual).<\/p>\n

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Breaking of the Pottery Ceremony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After all of the pots are broken, people collect shards as souvenirs for good luck.<\/p>\n

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Souvenir Shards<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We think that it\u2019s a miracle that someone below wasn\u2019t injured by a falling pot or a sliver of broken pottery.<\/p>\n

For lunch we ate creatively-made fish sandwiches from a colorful take-out shop around the corner from our apartment.<\/p>\n

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Take Out Fish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The rental car company delivered our car to the hotel Saturday afternoon and we parked it in one of the free parking lots in town.<\/p>\n

At midnight, there were fireworks and church bells but after a busy day, we were fast asleep.\ud83d\udca4<\/p>\n

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Night Time in Argostoli<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today it\u2019s Easter Sunday and we are moving to our next stop about 50 minutes away in Poros.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Nikos, the host at our next apartment in Poros has invited us to Easter dinner with his family. They will be roasting a lamb and we\u2019ll bring wine for the table. We\u2019re looking forward to a real Easter meal! Wishing you a Happy Easter Day!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Easter is the most important holiday of the year in Greece. Friday evening we watched a dirge-like procession as church leaders and parishioners carried epitaphs (tapestry with images of the death of Christ) around the city. There was a marching band; and three flowered floats with epitaphs. At the end of the procession Friday night, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Easter Celebrations in Argostoli”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greece-and-france-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5402"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5435,"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions\/5435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.woodring.us\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}