Meeting under the Plane Tree: Violation or Upholding of Tradition? The Ritual Year among the Himara Greeks

Abstract

This study is dedicated to analysing the Himariot tradition of villagers meeting for coffee in the main square for the celebration of important feasts or family occasions. The cultural code of the population of Himara, which consists mostly of Orthodox Greeks and Orthodox and Muslim Albanians, has undergone major transformation in the twentieth century due to social and political reasons, including the persecution of religious institutions which reached its peak in the 1960s. Churches, formerly the main place for celebrating main feasts and family ceremonies as well as exchanging local news, were closed or destroyed. Instead, the café/kafenio/lokal in the center of the village (usually near the closed-down church) became the sacred meeting place for the villagers, while the barman/waiter/cook became the gatekeeper (according to the gatekeeping theory supported by the author), who allowed or refused to grant community members entrance to the inner circle (those who make the decision for the entire community). The transformations in the 1990s and 2000s gave a start to new or forgotten ritual practices and pastimes, as well as an entirely new organization of community life. The change of ritual practices was considerably influenced by: 1) the factor of prestige of the sacred locus in the people’s mind; 2) the revitalization of tradition starting in case of an intrusion in the people’s ritual sphere; 3) a conscious or unconscious wish of  many of the communities to museify the past, in spite of the challenges of the present.