Feast of the Annunciation

The Feast of the Annunciation, known in Greece as Evangelismos, is observed on 25 March, the same day as Greek Independence Day. The date brings together the Christian account of the Archangel Gabriel announcing the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary and the national commemoration of liberation from Turkish rule. In the book, this pairing makes the day both a public ceremony of historical memory and a recurring occasion on which personal histories surface but remain partly concealed.

A Religious Feast and a National Commemoration

The national parade on 25 March fills the streets with schoolchildren, soldiers, and people wearing regional costumes. Flags appear on balconies and public buildings, are carried through the streets, and are sold in the squares. The celebration marks Greece’s liberation from Turkish rule, which the book contrasts with the more recent German occupation: the former lasted nearly four centuries, while the latter lasted three years.

The date’s religious significance gives the political commemoration an explicitly sacred frame. An elderly man at the parade tells the narrator that a bishop chose the day of the Evangelismos for the uprising, linking the announcement of Christ’s birth with the beginning of the struggle for liberation. He recounts the Greeks’ numerical disadvantage and their nine years of fighting as proof of a cause sustained by faith. His account is an expression of how the history is remembered, not a neutral recounting: as the parade passes, he relives the conflict with the fervour of someone who had taken part.

Public Ritual and Shared Storytelling

The parade turns historical memory into a visible, collective event. The old man raises a small Greek flag as he speaks, and people nearby begin listening; a young woman holds her child close and nods. The procession’s costumes, including embroidered jackets, elaborate scarves, gold coins, boots, and traditional skirts, give the march the character of a public spectacle as well as a commemoration.

The occasion also draws the narrator into a family’s celebration. The old man’s daughter, Penelope, invites the narrator to join the family for lunch, despite the narrator being a stranger. At their home, they share bakaliaros skordalia, salt cod with garlic mash, for the feast. The day thus carries memory through conversation and hospitality as well as ceremony: alongside the official parade, family stories are retold, interrupted, questioned, and offered to a new listener.

The Flag and a Family Secret

The public symbolism of the flag also sharpens a private conflict. During a later Independence Day parade, Evangelia hears a conversation about whether an Albanian boy has the right to carry the flag. She considers the implication for her own granddaughter: if the boy is excluded on grounds of ancestry, then her granddaughter’s claim is also complicated. The granddaughter is not of wholly Greek ancestry, a fact Evangelia believes she alone knows.

The family history behind that secret reaches back to the German occupation. Evangelia was eighteen when German soldiers entered her city. Her father owned a café near the port, and the occupying authorities forbade him to close it; the café consequently became popular with German soldiers. Evangelia helped her father by washing glasses and cleaning tables, while her mother refused to participate and her brothers left to join the resistance. Evangelia was not permitted to speak to the soldiers.

After the occupation, the family struggled amid widespread loss and deprivation. Evangelia’s pregnancy did not become apparent to people outside the family until her seventh month. Her parents accepted it, and the family explained the coming child by inventing a fiancé who had failed to return from the front. The baby, Efi, was welcomed as new life amid devastation, but she was never told who her father was. She later had children of her own, and her eldest daughter was named after Evangelia. Because Efi resembled her mother rather than her blond, German father, the secret remained hidden across generations.

Evangelia’s Annual Remembrance

For Evangelia, 25 March is also her name day and a day of private remembrance. She goes to church as she does each year and lights a candle for Franz Dieter, the German soldier she loved. He had not promised to return, but she continued to hope that she would see him again; when she encountered German tourists, she searched their faces for his distinctive eyes and gentle smile.

After the church service, she takes a taxi to the port and stands outside the now-abandoned café. There, as on every 25 March, she reads a poem from an old, battered book: Présence de Dieu. The yearly visit binds the public holiday to a loss she has never put aside. The date that celebrates national release from occupation also recalls the love and the family secret formed during that occupation.

The Date’s Double Inheritance

The Feast of the Annunciation consequently recurs in the book as more than a religious observance or a national anniversary. Its public rituals give Greece a shared story of faith and liberation, while the flag and the parade expose unresolved questions about ancestry and belonging. For Evangelia, the same calendar date holds a personal history that the national celebration cannot absorb: a daughter’s unknown parentage, a lost love, and a ritual of remembrance repeated year after year.