The 25th of March is a national holiday for the Greeks. On this day, they remember the day that the start of the war for the Greek independence began in 1821. For a bit of background information, Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire since 1453. That all changed when Bishop Germanos of Patras raised the flag of revolution. The cry “freedom or death” became the catchphrase of this revolution. The Greek accomplished quite a lot in the early years of the war, with even capturing Athens in 1822. Eventually though, tumult arised and by 1827 most of the Greek Islands, including Athens, were captured by the Turks again. The revolutionary war evoked a strong sympathy from Europe and Russia though, and they rushed to help the Greek as the revolution was close to failing. As it turned out Great Britain, France and Russia combined their forces and destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet in the naval Battle of Navarino in 1827. The war reached an end when the Treaty of Edirne recognized the Greek as an independent state in 1829.
Celebration
The way the Greek celebrate this holiday here in Vrontados and Chios is by having parades. The local schools have a parade where schoolchildren from different ages parade with Greek flags to a band. In Vrontados there was also a dance school which had kids of different ages walking in the parade, and after, they all danced typical Greek dances together. It was very fun to watch as someone who hasn’t seen much of that. The older kids, who were around 16, also had typical Greek costumes on.
In the bigger city of Chios, there was also a parade. This time with more people in typical costumes, but also the army and navy, who were marching with weapons. This was very impressive to watch and there were generally a lot of people watching.
The day before, which was a Friday this year, we only had school until 10AM. In which the kids had to recite a poem about these events and danced on traditional Greek music. Some of the kids even showed up in the traditional clothing!
Preparations
obviously, a lot of preparations go into celebrating this holiday. For this article though, I’ll only be talking about the preparations in the school I work in. I work in a kindergarten, so teaching the kids about what happened mostly consisted of colouring the faces of important people and linking them with their names etc. The kids also had some lessons about important happenings, like recapturing Athens and the end of the war, and they did this by having different paintings and drawings of these events hanging in the classroom for the entire month of March. To teach the kids about these events, I also had to make a little men or a woman in their traditional clothing out of carton for every kid, that they could take home with them. Throughout March I made a lot of interactive things like little books for the kids to play with and learn about this day.
In this month we as a school also went to the Chios Maritime Museum, where the kids learned about the different boats in the fleet that would eventually win them the war.
All in all, I myself learned a lot about this holiday, by making stuff for the kids and going on excursions with them. It was all very interesting, since I knew nothing about this day before being here. The parades were also a lot of fun to watch and it was great to learn a little bit more about Greek traditions and holidays!
