All of my favorite feast day traditions have some food-related theme to them. St Phanourios, or the baking of the phanouropita, is one of my absolute favotires and just so happens to feast day tradition that sparked my love for learning more about the cultural food traditions celebrated throughout the world! You can read more about my first phanouropita in this blogpost. This year, we had the joy of serving phanouropita for coffee hour!

Watch our phanouropita for coffee hour in this reel on Instagram:

Instagram

It was 6 years ago when my friend first introduced me to Phanouropita, the sweet cirtusy cake baked in honor of St Phanourios. After learning more about this Greek tradition, I couldn’t wait to bring it to our future parish! As an American, we are often referred to as the melting pot of cultures, and I would argue that is true in our Churches as well! We are a melting pot of various cultures with one thing in common: our love and devotion to our Savior Jesus Christ. Our current parish is very culturally diverse and we have enjoyed incorporating all sorts of traditions brought forth from our parishioners! The tradition of baking Phanouropita is no exception. He is a very beloved Saint in our parish, so last year several families brought Phanouropita to be blessed after the service last year. This year, we decided to bring it to the parish during coffee hour, so we alerted our bakers (we have a group chat for all the enthusiastic bakers) and we had 10 cakes prepared and distributed.

Celebrating as a Community

If you follow me on Instagram, I shared in my stories the other day that I truly believe the proper place for celebrating the feasts is within the context of the Church community broadly. But as someone who has been apart of our parish for only 4 years, I know that these things can take time to build, especially if they have not been done before. I just so happened to be married to the Priest and he is gracious enough to entertain my bright ideas.

I want to encourage you, though. It takes time to build in new traditions into a community. So what I would encourage you to do is simply ✨ be faithful ✨

Yup, not very flashy, right? But it starts with one person, or one family, or a few families who adopt the tradition in their homes and they grow to be so fond of it, they desire to share it with others! As someone who has moved several times and dug roots into each of our parishes, I can tell you first hand that the community around you is the one YOU build. It takes time, effort, lots of prayer, and putting yourself out there to build a strong community, and the Church is the ultimate community! There is nothing more beautiful than being apart of the body of Christ. I find that feast day traditions can be one of the most fun ways to bond with others. So be bold, build you community, invite a family over for the feast and bake together, share phanouropita! Or bring it to church to share with others!

A side note about bringing it to the parish. Now as a Priest wife, I know first hand how many ideas are run past my husband. There are a million good ideas out there, but that doesn’t mean all of them are feasible, reasonable, or there are even the people around to do them. All things must be done in their proper season. So some food for thought: in order to bring new traditions to the parish, you can ask your priest’s blessing to facilitate such a thing, just be prepared to have a plan to execute and people to help! I know first hand how much our dear clergy have on their shoulders, so a simple idea isn’t enough. The last thing I want you to do is send this to your clergy and say “we should do this!” In order for this to be a reality, they will need a plan on how you will help to pull it off! And that's exactly what happened in our parish. Many enthusiastic helpers jumped in to bake, set up, serve and clean it up!

So that is to say, be faithful! Celebrate the feast, share it with others, and ask the Lord to bless it! t's amazing what simple faithfulness and devotion can do! What are ways your parish celebrates the feasts together and what encouraging words can you offer to those who want to help begin some new tradition?!

Whatever you do, may it be a blessing!

-Khouria Destinie