This past Saturday I went to the 38th Annual Greek Food Festival at the Holy Trinity-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral located in downtown Birmingham, AL. Before I went to the festival, I did not even know that there was a Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Birmingham, AL. Also, I had no idea what the festival was going to be like before I went to it. The only thing I knew about the Greek Orthodox Religion was from television, movies, or school teaching. For example, my ideas of Greek Orthodox families were that they were loud and would be dancing in big groups of people. On the other hand, I do know that this cultural heritage was going to be something different than anything that I have ever been involved with or visited.
The morning of the festival I realized that I was going to need to shed any type of negative feelings I had about the festival. I needed to also shed my feeling of superiority about my cultural prescription and look at the festival through a Greek individual’s perspective meaning that instead of looking at the festival from the outsider’s perspective, also known as the etic perspective, and enjoy the festival through an emic perspective. I believe that to know about the Greek culture or the festival I need to first know about the Greek’s history. Through some researching on a website (www.goarch.org) and from the program at the festival, I learned that the Christian religion was a major influence in the Byzantine Empire. However, the Great Schism in the fifth and sixth centuries led to a division from the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church, which is the religion that I am. From then on, the Greeks developed separate from the Western Christianity. Today, the Greek Orthodox Church is a communion of self-governing churches, but they are all united by a common faith and spirituality. After learning more about their history, I discovered that there is not much difference between the Orthodox and Catholic religions.
When I got to the festival, I realized that I needed to continue to understand this culture on its own terms, also known as cultural relativism. I went inside the area next to the church, and there was music playing and groups of people lined up outside in line to get food. The lines were so long that I decided to pass on the food and just take a look around the festival. However, I did get some peaks at the food being served, and the food did look delicious even though I had no idea how to pronounce most of it. So, I went to watch the band play some music. While I was watching the band, a couple of little girls dressed in traditional Greek attire started doing a traditional Greek line dance. I was so surprised that these very young girls had already learned about the traditions of their culture. After watching them dance, I started feeling a little bit of culture shock. I found myself missing the surroundings of my Catholic Church and the congregation I am so used to seeing every weekend. So, I took a couple of deep breaths and decided to take a tour of the church thinking maybe it was the heat that was making me feel funny. When I walked into the church, I was overwhelmed. The paintings and the sculptures inside were so beautiful and well-designed. The atmosphere reminded me so much of the St. Paul’s Catholic Cathedral downtown. There were different stations inside the church. For example, they had a section dedicated to the different items used at weddings and baptisms.
In the end, I had more fun than I thought that I was going to have at the festival. Going to this festival helped me to realize that even though people may look or act differently from me that we all may be more similar to each other than we previously thought before experiencing each others' different cultures.
