Bonfires and Dirty Poems?

I've said this before and I know I'll say it again....

I will never understand this place!

So Sunday night there was a small festival for Saint Yiannis, or as we know him, St. John the Baptist. St. John is a pretty big deal for a lot of people. He was around a little while before Jesus came onto the scene, but just a very little while because it's thought that St. John was the one who baptized Jesus. It's also believed the St. John foretold the coming of Jesus and a few even say the Jesus studied under St. John. Anyway the point is that Saint John, or Saint Yiannis as he's called in Greek, is a pretty important figure and not just in the Greek Orthodox religion. He's so important that the Greeks celebrate him on three different days throughout the year. The first is on January 7th (hmmmm, I think this day is significant for another reason too....) which is his official Saint Day and also the day that anyone named after him will celebrate their name day. If you're a man that will be Ioannis or the more common Yiannis.  If you're a woman Ioanna is more common but you'll also hear Yianna as well. Notice that they're the same names just slightly changed to sound more feminine or masculine? That's the same with all Greek names, there is always a matching male and female version of the name. The second Saint Yiannis day was this festival but I was told that the actual Saint Day wasn't Sunday, they just had the festival on Sunday because it was easier. No one could give me an exact day though so lets just say it's around June 24th. And the third day...well I got answers all over the calendar for that one from between February to November so clearly the third St. John Day is not as big of a deal...at least by the people that I asked anyway.

I also couldn't get a clear answer as to why they were doing the "rituals" they were doing. I use the word "rituals" loosely because there didn't seem to be anything sacred or even remotely religious about them. Usually on a festival day there's some weird stuff going on but there's always some connection to an ancient ritual or religious rite or something. But this....as far as I could tell it was just for fun.

So first there was a massive bonfire. Everyone was seated or standing or wandering around the fire. There were a ton of young kids there so it was definitely meant to be a family thing with parents bringing their kids and even the grandparents along. I noticed a few suspicious-looking people waiting around by the edge of the fire. As soon as the fire would die down a bit, they would run and jump over the fire. Why? I have no idea. It seemed pretty harmless actually until our friend's Dad jumped over and one of the sparks landed in his hair....some guy ran up and started hitting him over the head to put the flame out but it took Yorgos a few seconds to figure out what the guy was doing to him! For a moment there things looked a little heated....OHHHHHH knee slapper. No it wasn't. Sorry about that, I couldn't help myself. Anyway, in all seriousness I guess if you're an avid hairspray user you should steer clear of the fire jumping...which probably explains why I didn't see any Greek women jumping.

This jumping over the fire business went on for about an hour I guess, and just as I was ready to leave they brought out the clay jug. If you read my last post I mentioned that I'd seen some posters advertising this festival, so I was starting to wonder why the only thing that was happening was this bonfire, but finally the jug came out so I stayed a little longer. So the jug was apparently put somewhere the day before so people could come down and put something inside it. I was told you can put anything you want inside but it has to be small because the jug isn't very big. The next day, the festival day, the jug would be opened and you can get your stuff back. The only thing I saw come out of the jug was a plastic toy Sylvester the cat from Bugs Bunny. There were some other things too but I couldn't see them. So why would you put Sylvester in the jug overnight and pick him up the next day???? NO IDEA! But while they were taking all these little nic-nac things out of the jug, a microphone was being passed around throughout the audience and people took turns telling dirty poems.....yes...I'm not kidding....dirty poems!! Why? Again, I wish I knew. Most of the poems I would only catch a word here or there that I knew, or I'd make out whole sentences but couldn't even begin to make sense of the meaning because Greeks are notorious for having strange sayings for things that when they're translated into English...they still might as well be Greek because they make absolutely no logical sense. For example if you and your friend are walking down the street and you hear "Ah, the rolling pot met the lid" it means that you're the same, you fit together like a pot and its lid. It's a joke but in a slightly negative way because it's meant to infer that you're both trouble, kind of like when we say our best friend is our partner in crime. Of if you say "He/she is for the festivals!" it's an insult. It means you think they're crazy and not the good kind of crazy but actually certifiably crazy. I won't go on because I'd be here for years but anyway my point is that I can't even  translate a poem here for you because I seriously couldn't make much sense of them. But I did hear the words for "penis" and "breasts" and "testicles" being thrown at times, and sometimes being referenced to things like "lemons" or other food...I wish I could tell you more than that but that's all I got. And of course the minute I took out my camera that night I had a dead battery! So sad! Otherwise I could just get someone to translate from a video but unfortunately I only managed to get 3 pictures from the whole thing. Anyhoo, I could tell they were dirty because I heard a lot of references to the human anatomy and I could tell they were poems because they rhymed and sounded like limericks. Kind of strange though since the majority of the audience was under 10 years old.........no judgement though! I'm just sayin'.....

I finally decided to call it a night after the crazy old lady from next door sat beside me with two of her crazy old lady friends and they started gossiping horribly about everyone that was there. And not good gossip either, most of it was downright mean. This is the same crazy neighbour that told my mother in law 2 years ago that she was going to be a grandma because she listened outside our door one day when Antonis and I were talking about future plans to have kids. Yeah, she's a delight! The nice thing to say would be that she could use a refresher course for her English grammar but actually, I think she's for the festivals.....

So that is the festival of Bonfires and Dirty Poems. Hopefully I can get some kind of clarification as to why they do these things and how/if they relate to St. Yiannis....especially the dirty poem part. That one just seems out of left field to me. Oh, another clue I did manage to get is that super religious people are actually really disgusted by this festival. One girl said "St. John would be so angry if he saw what was happening down there, they should be ashamed of themselves!!"....now I don't know if that's just the ramblings of a religious fanatic or not. I guess I'll have to wait and see if I can get some more information, but even if I do get more information it probably won't help because like I said....

I will never understand this place!