Our Crete 2011-2012

OUR CRETE 2011 - 2012. Or from Helsinki to Kalyves and back.
Glimpses of the journey and Crete.
Photos and texts © Hannu Lehmusvuori, Kiti Malmi-Lehmusvuori & Milli

Use without permission prohibited

Seventh (heaven) photostop: Crete 2011-10-01 to ->. Page 43.

Friday Jan. 6, 2012 - Theophany in Kalyves.

The Theophany Day includes a long service in the church, blessing water, distrubuting blessed water, blessing the people participitating in the ceremony, and a procession to the beach where the sea is blessed by the priest throwing the cross into the sea. The brave-hearts dive into the sea to compete who's the first one to bring the cross back to the priest. The competition is repeated three times.

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Some of the young villagers were outside the church, not in the long ceremony, waiting for the next steps of the day.

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After the ceremony the blessed water was prepared for distrubution, and distributed.

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The people coming out of the church were given a blessing by the priest.
The cross in the priest's hand is also used in the next step of the day's ceremony.

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The priest is now ready to tie a rope to the cross, and to proceed to the beach.

Almost all of the people have already headed for the beach when the icon carrier, the priest and the last people start their walk.

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The brave ones who compete in diving the cross back to the priest have a silent moment before the competition.

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The cross has been thrown for the first time.

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Seems like a head start by one :) But the competition is tuff!

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The first winner is the one in red!

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The cross has been thrown a second time, and the winner is celebrating!

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Now it's the light-blue's turn to bring back the cross!

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During the third throw also a lady participated. Here she is climbing up on the right.

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She did not win this time, because the man in contoured light-blue was faster - also to give the blessings of the cross to admiring spectators...

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... and then to the competing lady.

After the Theophany ceremonies we had an excellent dinner, prepared by Irmeli, in Mikko's and Irmeli's present apartment!

Very shortly after we came back home there was a total electricity black-out in the area. We are enviously looking at lights shining opposite our village, in the direction of Armeni, etc. in the south. So most of this has been written in candle-light. Be blessed you laptop with a decent battery!

The weather aftercast for today and last night in Kalyves:
During the morning and the day, all through the important ceremonies, we had windless sunshine! At the same time we heard news from Rethymnon: stormy winds and hard rain! At about 6 p.m. we could sense more wind and some raindrops here. By 7 p.m. we had the Rethymnon weather here, plus some lightning and thunder. Plus the electricity black-out. Electricity returned at about 11 p.m.

Today's high +17.6°C. Last night's low +4.6°C.