Christmas- New years -and other Azogires events

Like Every year Christmas did not find anyone alone in Azogires .

 Every one did his part The newly found Azogires Cultural association decorated a living Christmass tree with the funding of the Koukoutsakis and the Jarvis families ,the Schaab Family turned their house into a lighthouse Of the Christmas spirit , A tradition that is slowly widely spreading in our village .

The Christmas table In the Alfa Cafe  Had a great  variety of Items Starting from free range  wild goat to minced pies and a large variety of  other sweets .And for those few hours we the  people of Azogires  under one roof became a family , a family Filled with the Christmas spirit  ,at the end of the feast our good friend art sang Christmas songs and gave us all a deeper feeling and a greater meaning of Christmas.

The days past quietly and sadly to say there was no snow not even in the mountains , so the  white Christmas was renamed  the bright Christmas since the sun was cracking the stone.

And Christmass nearly arrived it was the night before when our dedicated Priest Pater Eftihios Androulakis came to the Monastery at midnight to make the most sacred evening ceremony  of Christmas in our religion for the first time in our village , he started the ceremony not in the Church it self but in th e Cave above it , on the very same cave that the saints sat in . 

The lights were on the candles were burning while he was preaching as every one else was silent feeling deep in their hearts the Christmas spirit .And the miracle ?? although it was midnight 24 December  it was warm and the people felt blessed  for that 

then it was raining with no one getting wet . No one could explain how it is possible for the sky to be dripping water and every one under it to be dry , after 1 am the ceremony was over ,and the crowd went straight to the olive oil factory of Gabriel Papagrigorakis where the Azogires Church comity in corporation with the villagers had prepared the most delicious souvlakis followed with old red wine salads and french fries , when they finished eating and got up to go the skys opened up and it was raining non stop .

The new year came in quite peaceful by siting in the cafe drinking eating watching pirate films and listening to old and blues music the year was greeted with a bang ,we all wished each other happy new year as the new year cake came out with the good luck coin inside as we all were exited to find the coin non of us that night did .

But that is not the end for our Village some days later we had the memorial of  Gabriel Papagrigorakis someone who I consider a true Saint  .  A week  or so after the priest came early morning to the Church and started the sacred ceremony of Theofania as he blessed  water turning into Holy water , the people of the village all came to take Holy water home and drink it as we consider it to have curing abilities ,the priest filled his bottles and started from our village house to house door to door , and blessed the peoples home by splashing Holy water every where .It may be the only that all the resident Greek and  tourist alike waited with anxiety for the Priest to come and give them all the blessing  .

And so the decorations came down and got packed away leaving only one minor detail  to be taken care off The Associations Christmas tree  !, So several members of the Association took it and planted it down the road where the Koukoutsaki family will soon built a small Church in honor of the Holy trinity ,they planted the tree in order to make it into a monument symbolizing world peace and harmony  amongst the Worlds  nations Happy new year to all filled with joy happiness , and loads of joyfull moments