Panagiota Pic: Sofia's first day of school

Moorestown, September 17, 2010

Today's "Panagiota Pic" was taken on Sofia's first day of Montessori last year, which happened to fall on her name day. For those of you not familiar with name days, each saint recognized by the Greek Orthodox Church has a day during the calendar year when s/he is celebrated. Since Greeks tend to recycle their names (I can easily count at least half a dozen "Nicks/Nikis" and the same number of "Panagiotas/Panagiotis" among Pegs' first cousins), almost everyone shares their name with one of these saints. When your saint's name day comes around, you get to celebrate, too.

I suspect that Greeks emphasize names days not only because religion is so deeply integrated into their culture, but also because for a long time Greeks weren't too good with record-keeping. If no one can remember on what day you were born (or even what year), it's kind of tricky to figure out when you should open your presents.  By way of example, for years my father-in-law thought that his birthday was about a month before or after it actually happened (I can't remember which) until someone dug up his baptismal certificate, which showed he was born in April rather than March/May. As you can imagine, the lack of accurate records made celebrating birthdays (and hitting on girls at bars by asking for their sign) really challenging. Thankfully, almost everyone knows their own name, which meant they could rely on the church to tell them when they could pig out on some name-day galopita.

Panagiota's name day is August 15, which is a national holiday in Greece, but not just because she was so awesome. Those of you who studied eastern orthodoxy or have at least five syllables in your last name will know that August 15 is the day of the Assumption, when the Virgin Mary was supposed to have ascended bodily into heaven. It's kind of a big deal: the whole country fasts for two weeks beforehand, and then everyone gets the day off and parties like it's MCMIC. So mark it down on your calendars, and remember to wish Pegs chrona pola next year.

Bonus: I know it's not as much fun as finding out your Jedi name or Wu-Tang Clan name, but if you'd like to know when your Greek name day would be, click on this link. Then be sure to go to a Greek restaurant (or any diner in New Jersey) on that day and ask if you can get a free piece of baklava. Or maybe a sheep's head.

Update/Correction: There are a lot of name days for people named "Panagiota;" Pegs actually celebrated hers on November 21, and not August 15 as I said above. (Classic example of why I should rely on my Outlook calendar and not the Interwebs.) You should still feel free to take off every August 15, though; your boss will completely understand. Also, apparently my father-in-law was only mistaken by a day or so regarding his birthday; in my head (and for purposes of storytelling) it always sounds better when I say that he was off by an entire month.