High-Season Piety: An Ethnographic Account of Community, Commensality, and Ritual in Anafi Island’s Summertime Orthodox Christian Religious Practices

Abstract

This paper explores the material culture of religious life on the Greek island of Anafi during the peak tourism season of summer 2023. Through ethnographic fieldwork, the paper examines the public celebration of a number of feasts coinciding with the summer high season: the Transfiguration of Christ, one of the Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church, celebrated on the sixth of August; the Dormition of the Theotokos (Mary the “Birthgiver of God”) on the fifteenth, with evening Supplications to the Theotokos in church on every August weekday leading up to the feast; the feast and commemoration of the immensely popular Saint Fanourios on the twenty-seventh of August, with the main celebration centering on the preceding day’s vespers; and, in September, the major feast of the island: the Nativity of the Theotokos (8 September), which unfolds into four-days-long festivities, due to the main shrine of the island being dedicated to the protectress of Anafi, Panayia Kalamiotissa. This paper focuses especially on the role of commensality and shared meals in maintaining kinship ties and social communion. Ritualized festive eating emerges as a way of consolidating the community of permanent island residents and diasporic islanders returning for summer. The continuity of these embodied practices provides insight into Anafiot identity and lived religion. Ultimately, this paper reflects on how contemporary Orthodox theologians have re-discovered the priority of materiality and the senses in ecclesial life.