October 9, 2002

AT THE GREEK food festival "A Taste of Greece," held the penultimate weekend in September at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral (245 Valencia at 14th St.), we naturally sampled the pastitsio. It was made with ground beef and topped with a thick, spongy layer of cheese custard.

"I like yours better," my friend said.

So do I, really, but mine is so New World now – with the traditional béchamel, nutmeg, and cinnamon chucked in favor of chiles, cilantro, ground turkey, and queso fresco – that it can't fairly be called pastitsio anymore.

Although I've been past the cathedral many times over the years, I never knew what it was until we bought our tickets and stepped into the courtyard, where the air was full of folk music and the smell of meat being grilled for gyros (which we reluctantly passed over in favor of the pastitsio), and the crowd was festive in that distinctively Greek way. I would choose an ethnic food festival over a street fair any day – the sense of the exotic is powerful, whereas street fairs all seem the same – but I did find myself wondering why the Greek festival followed the Armenian festival, and the Jewish High Holidays, by only a week.

Weather might play a part, summer being a perennially late arrival in the city. But a bigger factor is probably religious timing. Surely it is no coincidence that both Greek and Armenian festivals are held in churches; as John Shelby Spong points out in his A New Christianity for a New World (HarperSanFrancisco, $13.95), "the organizing principle and therefore the basic outline of Mark's gospel" – and so of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, which are heavily derived from the earlier Mark – seems to be "the liturgical year of the Jews at least from Rosh Hashana (New Year) to Passover (deliverance).... Mark appears to begin his Jesus-story at the time of ... Rosh Hashana."

Much is explained here, among other things the barrenness of the Christian calendar from Pentecost ("50 days after Easter") until Advent, the need for some sort of Christian celebration to make an (unacknowledged) parallel with the High Holidays, and the emphasis on eating, since observant Jews fast on Yom Kippur.

We were relieved that the excellent food did not emphasize – in fact did not include – pork. Many of the dishes were vegetarian, and those that weren't featured chicken or ground beef. And we were delighted by the loukoumathes, balls of fried dough bathed in honey. We devoured them in the dusky courtyard, with joy gathering all around us. It felt remarkably like a holiday.