Epiphany Day in Tarpon Springs

Up the road from where we live is Tarpon Springs, Florida. This is where we moved when we came down from Kentucky when I was a kid. Tarpon Springs has a Greek-American population (they always include the "-American" part when referring to themselves) descended from divers brought over from Greece a hundred years ago to work the Gulf of Mexico for sponges. The sponge industry was a big deal in Tarpon Springs until the "red tide" killed most of the sponge beds in the 1940's. They made some valiant attempts to revive the sponge industry but now the old docks are lined with shrimp boats, not the classic old Greek sponge boats.

They have a beautiful Greek ("Eastern") Orthodox church in the city, and every year on January 6 they celebrate Epiphany, the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. This year is the 100th year that they are doing this in Tarpon Springs, and the patriarch of the Church flew in from Istanbul to lead the ritual.

My fondness for Tarpon Springs and the Greeks stems from my parents. As school teachers, they were immediately accepted into the community. Back in Kentucky, you could move to a new town and still be referred to as the "new kid in town" after living there for ten or twenty years. They fell in love with Greek food, the people, and the traditions and trappings of the Greek Orthodox Church. Keep in mind that they were Southern Baptists, so this was a major cultural event in their lives.

Our local paper has a nice section dedicated to Epiphany. Check it out. Scroll down to the gallery, which has some great old photos and a narration:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/webspecials06/epiphany100/index.shtml