Celebrating Again?

 Yup, here we go again.  One of the grand-daughters became a godmother last weekend.  She and another girl baptised, or the Priest did, a bouncing baby girl.  As Godmother she could invite her family to the ceremony and so it was another family get-together.

Here are the 2 godmothers reading the ....Apostles Creed, I believe it is called in English.  That prayer that begins

I believe  in God, the Father Almighty......

Then they promise to do all they can to make sure the babe will be a devoted member of the Orthodox church.

The child is dunked 3 times into the font, covered with olive oil, the best from this year's family olive harvest, and has 3 pieces of hair cut off. 

This little babe is one of the few that didn't wail when she was dunked.  Most babies cry throughout the ceremony.

She was baptised Evangelia-Pavlina,  Evelina for short

Once all that oil is wiped off with a special cloth she is 

 dressed again in the new baptismal clothes bought specially by the Godmothers. The Priest puts on her gold cross, also bought by the Godmothers. 

They then proceed around the font 3 times 'in an act of rejoicing with the angels of heaven' says Mr Google 

Before Evelina was handed back to her mother my grand-daughter, holding Evelina, was lifted into the air by her siblings and told they'd keep her up there if she didn't promise them a gift.  

After 'a bottle of beer', 'a vow to wash all their dishes for a month', 'free tickets on the car ferry to Galatas' didn't make the grade they finally let her down after she agreed to buy them tickets to New Zealand.  That's going to be an expensive baptism for her!

Both Godmothers will take Evelina to church for the next 3 Sundays to take communion and then their duties are buying gifts for her on Name Days, Birthday, Xmas and Easter.

The party afterwards took place on the beach.

We changed into more casual clothes, drank beer and ate souvlaki till a chill evening wind made me move K and head home.

]

The beach wasn't deserted but it was mostly ours.  The sun came and went.  Small children and dogs went swimming.

When my girls were baptized, on Poros, my mother-in-law took the cloth that held the oily baby down to the sea and washed it there. That tradition has died out.  We went back to Piraeus the next week so my girls weren't taken for communion. Their heathen mother wasn't prepared to go that far.

They've grown up into awesome adults anyway.