In Which I Examine Various Things Said to Be Un-Christian

I saw a man walk on hot coals the other day. And five days later, I watched Forrest Gump, Amelie and Gandalf chasing through the streets of various European locations in a search for the holy grail. Normally, it would be hard to connect these two experiences, but I have found a way; both are condemned by some christians for being blasphemous. OK, you say, but that's hardly unique; some christians will condemn anything and everything, including M and Ms. (See the Book of Mormon for further details on that one.) Yes, I say, but M and Ms have not played a big part in my life as of late. So we'll talk about coal walking and the Da Vinci Code instead.
The coal walking took place in a village called Langadas, which is either 9km, 20km, or 12km outside of Thessaloniki, depending on which guidebook you happen to own. Some friends, friends of friends and I had a few adventures getting there via taxis and public buses, but we made it eventually. It was Sunday, May 21st, the feast of Saints Constantine and Eleni. This is the traditional date for the coal-walking ceremony, which also takes place in Serres, about one hour further down the road. Some say that the coal walking ceremony dates back to pagan times, and indeed, this is exactly why the Orthodox church has condemned it. Although it has been going on for centuries, and always on this same day, it used to take place in hiding to avoid trouble from the religious Powers That Be. Nowadays it is much more public, although it still does not take place in church.
We had arrived hours in advance, so we decided to stop by a taverna and eat before the ceremony. There we talked to some locals who gave us another story entirely. They reported that the whole thing dates back to the early christian era, when a church in Asia Minor (a part now in Bulgaria) burned down on this very day. The people of that village rushed into the church to save their icons, and managed to make it in and out of the flaming debris without getting burned. Indeed, the modern ceremony involves a lot of dancing with the icons of Constantine and Eleni, and is regarded by the participants as a christian ceremony, so which version of the story you choose to believe is somewhat negotiable.
In any case, it was about 8:30pm when we found the location where the coal-walking was to take place. It was a small very simple house with a large empty yard out back; hardly a grandiose location, which made it all the more interesting. The house was packed full of people and music was being played while a number of villagers danced back and forth with the icons. In case you have not seen orthodox icons, these were big, a foot or two high, and looked to be encased in silver. Outside, a fire was lit, and a crowd watched the wood burn down slowly into hot embers. We waited for over an hour, listening to beat of the music from inside, where the coal-walkers were presumable dancing themselves into some sort of a trance. I could barely peer past the crowds and into the windows to catch glimpses of musicians and dancers.
It was nearing 11pm when they emerged, a procession of about twenty people, men, women and children, drenched in sweat from dancing, still strumming their instruments, many adorned with bandannas and clutching the icons. They passed right right by me and into the yard, where the remains the fire had burned down into black coals with the occasional flicker of red to remind you of the heat.
At this point the crowd had gone silent and pressed inwards toward the yard, and I could hardly see what was happening. It took a while, but I eventually managed to work my way to the front and I did in fact see several people walking across the red hot coals. It was quite impressive. I hardly know what to make of it. There are a variety of theories as to how these people can walk across coals and emerge with the soles of their feet intact, but nobody has really figured it out for sure. One outsider even tried it a few years back and emerged with third degree burns on her feet. I just wonder how one starts coal-walking. I suppose if you have done it for years you must not be afraid of it, but what of the first time? How do you know that you are ready and that won't get burned? I suppose this question proves that I'm far too skeptical to undertake such a task.
I have some pictures of all this, but I'll be honest; they're not great, and for some extremely irritating reason, blogger refuses to let me post them. Perhaps blogger has highly traditional feelings about Christianity. Maybe it's afraid of condemnation. Well, use your imagination. I think the whole idea should give you some material to work with.
And now for the more mundane example of blasphemy. I'm not even going to explain the Da Vinci Code, because to do so would be to assume that you are hiding in a cave somewhere and this blog is your only connection to the outside world. If that is the case, you are already totally out of the loop and you have more important things to worry about than this particular offspring of popular culture. In fact, mostly I am just going to point you all to Anthony Lane's review in the New Yorker, which is absolutely the meanest thing I have read all year, and therefore far more entertaining than the movie itself. I do not know how Anthony Lane manages to dredge up such ire and viciousness on a regular basis, and perhaps he had some unpleasant incidents in his childhood, but I am awfully glad about it, because his movie reviews are one of the first things I read in each issue of New Yorker after I have looked for new David Sedaris essays.
Myself, I have nothing to say about the religious implications of this book. In my opinion, if Christianity really wanted to keep up a positive image, they would be less upset about the idea of a happily married Jesus than they would about a Jesus who sanctions killing. Or maybe they should be upset by the prospect that some people would actually be dumb enough to believe that Catholicism is overrun by violent albino monks. I think that people have a right to be angry if they feel that their religion is being falsely portrayed, but if the combined effects of Martin Luther, John Calvin, celibacy and and numerous sex scandals have failed to topple the Catholic church, well, is Ron Howard really going to be the Vatican’s undoing?
The Da Vinci Code, of course, has not just been condemned by Catholics, it has also been condemned by Orthodox officials, even the archbishop of Thessaloniki himself, who decreed that all faithful citizens should not go see it. Based on the fact that it is still playing in every Thessaloniki cinema, there are not a lot of faithful citizens out there. I'm not sure why these religious officials even bother to ban things like this. Don't they realize? People are just like small children; we'll go after anything we're told me can't have. Take me and Lucky Charms. Growing up, I was allowed to have some junk food, but Lucky Charms were not allowed unless we were on vacation. My sister and I munched on Kix and Total for years. When I finally arrived at college, I remember seeing the giant bin of Lucky Charms sitting there in the dining hall, free for everyone in unlimited amounts, and I thought "Wow!" I barely registered the empty vodka bottles in the recycling bin and the people trying to give me condoms every time I turned a corner. But Lucky Charms, man. Lucky Charms were decadence. They were the embodiment of independance. They tasted of adulthood, how's that for irony? But you know what? I don't even really like them. Total is better. I'm just glad my parents didn't enforce a ban on coal-walking in childhood, because that could have created far more dire circumstances than a few bowls of sugar during freshman orientation.
Here's my beef with the whole franchise; let’s say that you are part of a secret society that considers femininity to be sacred. You think that Catholics are misogynists, and blame them for denigrating female sexuality, persecuting free-thinking women and keeping women out of positions of power. You think that Mary Magdalene was supposed to be the true founder of Christianity. So when it comes to choose a leader for your radical feminist group, wouldn’t it occur to you to maybe choose, I don’t know, a woman? In this fictional priory thing, women are special enough to be divine sex objects instead of evil sex objects, but sex objects they remain, and men like Da Vinci and Newton and the dead guy on the floor of the Louvre are still the ones who actually control shit. If that’s actually supposed to be some sort of iconoclastic revelation for the modern age, maybe I should disappear to one of those caves at Meteora.
And furthermore, even if there were living descendants of Jesus, what in holy hell would they be doing in France? I mean, I know that my geographical knowledge is scant; after all, I placed Bedford-Stuyvesant in Manhattan. However, I am pretty damn sure that Jesus was not French. I am pretty sure that he was not, actually, European. In fact, I think he was Middle Eastern and Jewish. I suppose people do migrate over the course of thousands of years, but I also suppose that Paris makes a far more scenic location for an action movie than modern day Nazareth.
In case you’re wondering, I did both read the book, and see the movie. I suppose you could call that silly, seeing as I clearly have lots of issues with both. The naked truth is, however, that I like Tom Hanks, and his fellow cast members, and I really, really really like London. I would probably pay seven Euros to watch people eat sandwiches in London if they strolled past enough scenic locations in the process. If only it had better bagels and less insane exchange rate, it would be the perfect city. (New York, on the other hand, would be the perfect city if it had Shakespeare’s Globe.) So no, I’m not immune to fun. I’m just an English major, and this is what happens when you let an English major loose on the world with nothing to analyze; she creates a totally unnecessary treatise on Dan Brown. Stay tuned for next week, when I will discuss the influences of John Milton on Harry Potter, and the week after, when I write my own novel about a female God who loves the idea of gay marriage, encourages coal-walking, eats m and ms, and strikes down several choice members of the government. Because if you're going to create a totally silly religious controversy, you might as well do the damn thing right.