Greek Easter celebrations shift to home front with help of technology

EASTER celebrations for Darwin’s Greek community, which usually involve a week of church services followed by a large public gathering and feast, will look different this year because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Nick Halkitis and Nick Poniris at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas ahead of Greek Orthodox Easter. Picture: Glenn Campbell

EASTER celebrations for Darwin’s Greek community, which usually involve a week of church services followed by a large public gathering and feast, will look different this year because of COVID-19 restrictions.

However, Greek Orthodox Community of North Australia president Nick Poniris said the community had found new ways to celebrate.

“It’s a Holy Week – every day there’s church services day and night that people would attend usually,” he said.

“We’ve been livestreaming our services for the last three weeks and we’ve had large numbers in terms of viewers.”

The major change this year is there will not be a feast to celebrate the end of Lent – which usually sees hundreds gather to eat together at Fannie Bay’s East Point.

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“After the Lent period – which means we abstain from eating any animal by-products for 40 days – we have a feast,” Mr Poniris said.

“Normally we would have a large congregation of Greek community members throughout the East Point Foreshore … sadly this year I can’t see that happening.

“But, our Greek community are quite resourceful and have reasonably sized houses, so it will be more of an indoor activity this year.

“Families would be observing the no-more-than-10-person-gatherings rule.

“We’ll have to conform with what we have.”

Mr Poniris said the community was disappointed at not being able to observe their usual traditions, but technology had allowed the close-knit community to band together.

“While they (the Greek community) don’t have that community support mechanism, the consolation is that we have technology these days that makes life easier,” he said.

“We can still be part of a service.”