Recently I spoke of the Greek choir I was a member of when I was a young girl. I left the church and organized religion in my teens. Total absence of belief evolved as I married an atheist who was also brilliant, often referred to in his circle as “The Giant Brain” or alternatively as “Uncle Jay” because he was their “go to” friend when they were troubled.

Medieval attitudes towards women played a part, as did the general hypocrisy of the clergy and the politics of “who gets in” on popular nights such as those preceding Easter Sunday.

There are two very special services that occur on the Thursday and Friday evening services before Easter Sunday. They are Holy Thursday, the night of the ascension, and Holy Friday, the epitafio – the flowered bier that is carried out of the church and through the streets with the congregation following. Holy Thursday is my favorite church service.

People get a candle as they come in and take it, unlit, to their seats. The service begins and when it is time, the house lights are turned off and there is complete darkness. The choir is singing Christos Anesti (Christ is Risen) a hauntingly beautiful hymn in a minor key. Altar boys approach each side of the church pews and light the candles of the people in the first row from their candles which are (it is claimed) refreshed in Greece from an eternal light and carried across the ocean, much like the Olympic torch. For all I know, the source for the Olympic torch and for the Greek service, is the same.

The first row of congregants turn and light the candles of those behind them – all the while the choir is singing and the congregation sings along. The lighting process continues until everyone is holding a lighted candle. As more and more candles are lit, the church lights come on one by one, until the entire building is blazing with light.

When the service is over, everyone leaves with their lighted candles. The candles are used to renew lights in homes that keep a light mounted on a sconce on a bedroom wall under glass. We did not keep such a light but I still remember walking home with my candle shielded by my hand so it would not go out. Don’t ask me what it is called. When I Googled for an answer, I got a lot of historical religious prattle and no specifics.

Because I do not belong to any church now, it is doubtful that I could get in to attend a Holy Thursday service because it is usually mobbed and the best seats go to the regulars and biggest contributors. Memories must suffice. Moreover, that was then, when the Greek population were new immigrants, and now, when “now” means the service is not in Greek, but in English, and I sincerely doubt anyone born in this country who is under 50 can speak the language. It also occurs to me that under those ecclesiastical garments, one might find jeans and a rock star T shirt. It kind of ruins the illusion for me that anything they have to say is important.

FYI, girls could not become altar girls and, particularly, were not allowed behind the altar, except for when they were baptized and, as infants, could not possibly be menstruating, a badge of inferiority so pervasive, an evil so vile, that second-class citizenry was a privilege barely tolerated.

Now you know why I left the church. Or, as I snarled to my mom one night when she told me not to kiss the icon, “I can’t kiss the icon BECAUSE I’M WHAT??!@!” Slow fade to me as I am now.

xx, Teal