Opa!

Every year since we moved to St. Louis, we’ve said we should go to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in the Central West End for their annual Labor Day Greek Festival. Since this is hopefully the last year we’ll be in the area, we went ahead and made plans to go this weekend. Unfortunately, it rained ALL day Saturday, so we went after church today.
We took a tour of the church and listened to a couple of dudes talk about their faith and the symbols throughout the church. Even though I have been to Greece for the sole purpose of understanding the religions that have been important throughout their history, I really didn’t have a clear understanding of what makes Greek Orthodoxy all that different from Catholicism, except the priests’ pointy beards and funny hats (turns out that the priest at St. Nicholas looked and dressed a lot like Pastor Paul at St. Andrews Lutheran, not the priests I encountered in Greece…). However, there are a lot of differences, most that Andy and I sat there and nodded our heads in agreement to, like not using philosophy to define parts of their faith, just going by the scriptures and acts of Christ, not praying to or through saints (in fact, in every depiction of Mary, Jesus MUST also be present), and not having a hierarchy of leadership (no pope, or one person in charge who has some sort of “divine” connection). Of course, there are lots of parts that I don’t agree with, such as the role (or lack thereof) of women, having 7 sacraments (we only have 2), and the whole saint thing in general.
Anyway, we really went for the food, so after the tour and listening to their choir “chant,” we waited in line for about 35 minutes for some gyros, salad, Greek fries (not as good as the ones in Greece, unfortunately), and baklava. The gyros were great and the salad as good as you’re going to get when they’re serving thousands of people in a tent outside. We were too full for the baklava, so brought it home for later. It looks really good and fresh, though, unlike others I’ve had at local restaurants (my baklava standards are pretty high!).
So, in memory of the soon to be deceased Reading Rainbow, here’s my pitch: If you live in St. Louis and have never been to the Greek Festival, you should definitely go. They’ll be there until 9 tonight and from 11-8 tomorrow!