Every year on Greek Orthodox Clean Monday, the official first day of the 40-day Lenten period, a town in central Greece becomes the epicenter of a tradition dating back thousands of years to Greece’s pagan days when a god named Dionysus was the local hero.
Thousands of people from throughout the world descend upon the town of Tyrnavos for a celebration called the Bourani, a festival with ancient pagan rituals celebrating the phallus and the fertility if shares.
The entire town is decked out in penis decorations. Penis-shaped balloons, signs, pastries– even the bakery is selling penis-shaped loaves of bread and pastries.
Throughout town in the squares and street corners are larger-than-life wooden or clay phalluses. The townsfolk, too, carry smaller wooden phalluses and tease passers-by with gestures and obscene poems.
Every few hours in certain parts of town, hundreds gather to listen to folkloric songs, ride penis-shaped see-saws and dance traditional dances.
Throughout the town, mothers can be seen sitting their children on oversized penis statues and snapping photos. I was curious and asked one of them “How do you explain this to your young daughters,” I asked.
“What’s to explain?” She snapped back at me. “The penis is fertility. It is life. We are all here because of this. And this is what I tell my children.”
As I was walking away, she came back and continued the conversation with me.
“You have made this something dirty. You forbid conversations about it amongst your children, making them think too that it is something shameful or taboo. On the contrary, we celebrate it and explain from a young age that life comes from the penis.”
Music, dancing, food all day and night long. Indeed, Dionysus would be proud of his flock.
The local Greek Orthodox Church, however, takes a back seat during the festival and stays away, cleaning that pagan celebrations have no place in the life of an Orthodox Christian.
The thousands of people dancing around me carrying giant penises definitely don’t agree with the church’s position.
