Marilyn Rouvelas' Guide to Greek Traditions in America reviewed by Dan McCormac
 

When my father announced in 1969 that we were leaving the States and moving to Greece, my learning told me our family would be ditching the Dodge and tie-dyes, and exploring the dirt roads of central Athens in Ben Hur's chariot and togas.

That ancient childhood reverie and a lot of real history were excavated when I dug into Marilyn Rouvelas's bestseller, A Guide to Greek Traditions and Customs in America, just published in its second edition.

"When a young Greek-American girl told her classmate that her background was Greek," Rouvelas begins, "the classmate responded, 'Oh, do you believe in Zeus?'

Beyond the classics

For many the perception of Greek Americans stops with classical Greece What non-Greeks may not be aware of is the heritage that shaped the Greek Americans after the classical period".

No one will be able to plead ignorance before the 'areopagos' (high court) after reading Rouvelas's book. The writer's thorough research, her attention to the dynamics of historical and social change and her passionate attachment to Hellenism and Orthodoxy make this much more than the user's guide the title proclaims.

From recipes and retsina to the influence of the fall of Constantinople on the Renaissance, this book has just about everything for anyone interested in what defines contemporary Greek Americans - indeed, it tells us much about Westerners in general.

The common-sense advice about how to handle every detail of Greek engagement parties, weddings, baptisms, name days, feasts, fasts, funerals, traditional dances and much more is peppered with insights. Rouvelas doesn't just tell us what the Greek Americans do, she tells us why they do it. The fragrant smoke of the incense the Orthodox burn, for instance, "symbolically carries prayers to God."

Full immersion

Rouvelas, born Edmunds, was raised a Lutheran. After she started dating Emanuel Rouvelas, the Greek American she would later marry, she says she immersed herself in Greek culture and history. It was a far-reaching quest for knowledge that led her not only into the Greek-American community in America, but also to Greece, where she took a course in Epic Literature and "fell in love with Achilles".

Years of study, observation and experience have made Rouvelas so sensitive to Greek ways that when she runs into that most incorrigible of things Greek - tardiness - she knows how to beat a graceful retreat. "Orthodox Church services begin on time," she writes, "but few parishioners are ever there!" After issuing a reprimand on this score, she advises the faithful to do their "best to arrive within the first half-hour to hear the Epistle and Gospel."

This is only one of the illustrations in Rouvelas's book of how tensions are resolved, or at least contained, in a culture at once individualistic and rich in the bonds of tradition. About fasting we are told that everyone "has his own rules from the church and from his motherone family always ate fried potatoes cooked in olive oil at noon the Saturday before taking communion."

The author has her own tension to resolve in this book. She says her "priority was always to make it useful for those who didn't know too much," but that she is also drawn to the scholarly. Two new chapters at the end of the second edition satisfy her intellectual proclivity without making the book any less accessible.

Orthodoxy

'The Historic Orthodox Church' looks at the emergence and history of Orthodoxy, and provides a clear exposition of the bewildering mosaic of Orthodox churches that exist in America and around the world. In the final chapter, 'The Greek Diaspora', Rouvelas reflects on the challenges facing Orthodox Christians today: from overcoming the fragmentation of Orthodoxy along ethnic lines in multicultural America to preserving the unity of Orthodoxy in the fragments of the former Soviet Union.

In adding the new chapters, Rouvelas says she has attempted to make clear "the universal, timeless qualities" that make Hellenism and Orthodoxy "relevant to all." Hellenism, she writes, advanced the belief that "people could use reason to solve problems" and gave us democracy. "Orthodoxy," she adds, "proclaims the timeless Christian message of love, forgiveness, kindness, and eternal life."
 

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