The Communicative Aspect of Festival and Pilgrimage in Greece, Modern and Ancient

Abstract

During modern and ancient religious festivals in Greece everyone offers what one wishes to receive more of in return, based on a logic very similar to the one Hesiod (ca. 700-650 BCE) expresses in his poem Work and Days (349 ff.) when he recommends the giving of a large gift in order to get more in return. Today, the significance of gifts and counter-gifts is obvious within Orthodoxy, since in Greek terminology, antidōro signifies the blessed bread (literally, “counter-gift”); that is, their bread offerings, or gifts, which have been blessed by the priest during the service, and what people are preoccupied with during the liturgy is the blessed bread they will obtain when the liturgy is over. During the festival of Agios Nektarios, a piece of the blessed bread might, for instance, be used as a healing remedy.

In the Mediterranean clientela system, people employ strategies based upon gifts and benefits to gain return gifts. The gift makes the recipient morally obliged for return giving, a favour for a gift. All personal and social relations rest on expectations of reciprocity. This principle also pervades the relations between people and their saints. The religion reflects a culture in which reciprocity and feasts are important elements. As the British anthropologist, Edmund Leach once stated in his book, Culture and Communication. The logic by which symbols are connected. An introduction to the use of structuralist analysis in social anthropology (1986), the logic of sacrifice illustrates how a religious ritual serves to express a relationship between the human world and the other world. By making a gift to the Gods, the Gods are compelled to give back benefits to man. This logic is also found elsewhere in the Mediterranean, and in the ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish worlds. 

This article, therefore, has not dealt with commerce and traditions per se, but rather the economic foundation of modern and ancient Greek religion by discussing some topics related to the communicative aspect of Greek religious festivals.