NEW YORK – The feast of the Epiphany was celebrated across the globe on Jan. 6. The holiday commemorates the baptism of Jesus Christ and the appearance of the Trinity, the Theophany. After presiding over the church services in Fanari, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew blessed the waters of the Golden Horn in Constantinople. The 29-year-old Nikolaos Solis from Greece dove in and retrieved the wooden cross.
For the first time since 1922, Greek Orthodox church services were held in Smyrna, Turkey to celebrate the Epiphany with Metropolitan of Smyrna Bartholomew presiding.
Undeterred by a cold front working its way across the country from the north and the generally unsettled weather, Greeks turned out in good numbers to celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, while many braved the freezing waters and dived after the cross during the various ceremonies to bless the waters, including in one instance an eight-year-old girl, as reported by ANA-MPA.
Despite strong winds, the ceremonies went smoothly on most of the Aegean islands, while on Rhodes a young woman called Eleni Karagianni stole the show when she beat her male rivals to recover the cross from the stormy seas.
A notable exception was Heraklio on Crete, where the ceremony in the city’s Venetian Harbor was cancelled due to a torrential downpour and held in the Cretaquarium instead. In spite of this, some swimmers dove into the harbor anyway and formed a symbolic human “cross” instead.
Three swimmers defied temperatures of -4C (24 degrees F) to dive after the cross in Lake Kastoria in northern Greece, four at Lake Polyfytos in Kozani, while 10 young Roma men observed the tradition by diving into the frozen waters of the Sakouleva River in Florina in light snowfall, as ANA-MPA reported.
In the New York area, churches were crowded with worshippers who observed the holiday in spite of its being on a weekday. Snow in some areas caused some churches to postpone the Blessing of the Waters until Sunday for the safety of the parishioners.
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