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On Saturday 12 April 2025  out Church hall was buzzing with scissors snipping as nimble fingers fashioned and folded frothy palm fronds into crosses. Making a Palm Sunday cross is more than just fun. It’s been a family and community tradition the Papadatos family have kept up for 48 years. It all started way back…

Wizards of baking! You’ve heard of ladies who lunch.Well how about this ? Ladies who bake! Part of our preparation for Easter is baking all those delicious delightful tsourekia (Easter breads). So the weekend of 5-6 April was a-buzz with baking,  Yes we have our beloved Greek mamas who can conjure up these pillowy braided…

Salutations to the Theotokos held at St George’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Woodstock on Friday 7 March 2025.   Last night we started our Lenten services with the First Salutations to the Theotokos, a sacred and joyous service of prayer and praise in our Orthodox tradition.   As we gathered to honour the Mother of God, we…

I have to warn you and ask for your indulgence during our Great Lent as there are so many religious, cultural and traditional rituals and customs happening and I would  dearly love to share some of them with you over the next 40 days. So here goes!    Greece is a country full of cultural…

 “To err is human; to forgive divine.”   This well-known quote is from Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism. It means that it’s normal to make mistakes, but that being able to forgive is a good and noble act.   Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting .   Did you know that the Greek word for forgiveness means…

For countries in the Northern Hemisphere the beginning of spring means the glorious rebirth of the world, as it were. The frosty mantel of winter is giving way to warmth, fruitfulness and bright colourful days.  That’s when the custom of the Marti bracelet is seen on wrists all over Greece, welcoming Spring with open arms. …

On Tsiknopempti (Smokey Thursday) I asked you to watch this space and here we are…….!   Today we did justice to the best souvlakia, lamb chops (and boerewors !) this side of Athens.   We celebrated the no-more-meat rule for Great Lent that is fast approaching with a community lunch in our church hall.   It was one…

On Saturday 22 February 2025 we commemorated the Saturday of Souls at St George’s Cathedral, with Archimandrite Doukas and Pater Nikolaos.  It was Psichosavato or Saturday of the Souls, one of the Saturdays set aside in the Greek Orthodox liturgical calendar to remember our dear ones who have passed on.   It’s also part of our process…

Celebrating with smoke!   So we are looking toward our Pascha preparations and last Thursday 20 February was Tsiknopemti, a cherished Greek tradition which is a prelude to our Great Lent Fast.   It’s all about enjoying an indulgent feast of meat with a lot of fun festivities thrown in when families and friends come together to…

It’s all Greek to us!  On Monday 10 February not only did we celebrate and congratulate some of our top Greek School students but we also saluted Greece’s National Poet Dionysios Solomos who wrote the glorious poem “Hymn to Liberty “which became the Greek National anthem in 1865 and the Cypriot National Anthem in 1966. …