ΣΤΕΦΑΝΑ

There are a number of euphemisms to describe getting married. One can get hitched, be wed, tie the knot, walk down the aisle, or exchange vows. In Greek, one can “dance Isaiah’s dance,” or “be crowned,” (στεφανώνομαι) referring to the stefana, or wedding crowns that form an integral part of the Orthodox wedding ceremony. These days, you don’t have to get married in a church to get to wear stefana for enterprising Greek-Australian wedding celebrants offer a “stefana service” where the emphasis is placed on the penultimate syllable, and where a helpful information booklet advises that you can pronounce them as “steph-arna”. Just a few years ago, such a service was invaluable as a means of convincing hysterical aged grandparents that their grandchildren could legally be married in a park, and thus secure their attendance and cash wedding present, for the crossing over of the stefana, no matter who performs the cross, or the double-cross, confers a legitimacy  upon proceedings like no other.

My favourite stefana are the Ethiopian ones. Bright, shiny and bulbous, they are exuberant as well as aspirational, for they are almost exactly identical to the mitres worn by Orthodox bishops. There is a certain irony in this, for bishops are not allowed to be married, but their crown is not exchanged, but rather bestowed. The golden, impossibly tall wedding crowns of the Indian Christians of the Syro-Malabar tradition are my next favourites, reminiscent as they are of lofty pagodas. In the Slavic tradition and traditionally in days of old in Greece, mitre-shaped metal wedding crowns, often extremely ornate and indistinguishable from the crowns of royalty are also employed. Unlike modern Greek usage, those crowns are not personal to the bride and groom but instead belong to the church and are used to crown all those who would be married within it.

That the wedding crown tradition predates Christianity can be evidenced by the fact that some early Christians opposed crowning in marriage, with figures like Tertullian expressing disapproval as to its pagan origins. Nevertheless, the practice eventually became accepted as it came to be linked with Biblical and Christian ideas of triumph. Paul the Apostle mentioned a "Crown of Righteousness" in his Second Epistle to Timothy as the eternal reward for the just, while John Chrysostom saw the crown as a symbol of victory over "uncontrolled sexuality." Generally however, the crowns are considered symbols of authority for the new domestic church formed by the creation of a new family. 

Unlike the wedding crowns of other traditions, with the exception of royalty, Greek wedding crowns have, for at least the past one hundred years, devolved to comprise a circlet, often studded with items resembling pearls, or a wreath and these are personal to the married couple, and thus cannot be used by anyone else. A number of customs arose over the years, relating to the use of stefana after the marriage ceremony. Some couples would frame their stefana in what is known as a stefanothiki and hang them over the conjugal bed in order to remind themselves of the sacredness of their commitment to each other. For similar reasons, others would hang them on the family iconostasis. When I was young, I discovered my parent’s stefana in an impossibly heavy, pink frosted glass case that I am convinced had it be hung anywhere it would have taken chunks of plaster out of the wall, in their wardrobe. They remain there to the present day. My own stefana are secreted in a more modest satin lined box at the back of our wardrobe as well, similarly awaiting discovery.

A few weeks ago, the intrepid restauranteur and collector of ephemera John Rerakis was browsing in a second-hand shop when he came across the stefanothiki depicted in this article. The wood laminated stefanothiki with its dated icons harkens back to a superseded aesthetic prevalent in the sixties and seventies. Indeed, the nature of its construction, slightly asymmetrical with its ornamentation apparently executed by a jigsaw, are consistent of the ethos of a people who did not have money to spend, no access to traditional products of the land they left behind and were forced to reconstruct their own customs using local materials as best they could. It is plain, commonsense, moving in its simplicity and abounding in its authenticity. It looks and feels old.  In contrast, there is a youthful exuberance exuded by the stefana within the case, with their plastic white flower decorations and similarly plastic mint leaf. They suggest that while the couple that wore these crowns may age, the love they share, and the meaning of all they have experienced together, will not fade, or diminish, but will endure for ever, or at least, for as long as it takes for the synthetic material they are constructed from to degrade into microplastics.

This is all for the good, for the presence of the stefanothiki in the store suggests that the couple to whom the stefana belong are no longer with us, and this most personal relic has found its way into the marketplace via a process of kin discarding or clearing out their personal effects after their demise. John Rerakis felt compelled to rescue the stefanothiki from oblivion, as he does so many other artefacts that he chances upon that reference our historical presence in Melbourne and did so at a price of $4.75. The sharing his find on social media elicited a number of responses from commentators expressing emotions ranging from distress to disgust at the fate of the stefana, a common sentiment being disapprobation towards the descendants of the deceased for being so heartless as to dispose this most personal of items.

Yet being so personal, the stefana themselves denote something ephemeral and the finite nature of all they represent is underlain by the customs concerned with their fate at the end of the marriage. According to some, each person takes to the grave the stefana worn by them on their wedding day. Others maintain that both stefana should be buried with the last surviving partner for it is only with their death that the marriage is deemed over. Others deride this as a custom that arisen outside the authority of the church. Instead, some priests advise, the correct procedure, which also applies in the case of divorce, is for the stefana to be returned to the church where they were blessed, there to be disposed of respectfully, or for them to be burned with due reverence so that no possibility exists for them to be desecrated.

The intensity of the reaction accompanying the purchase of the discarded stefana thus seems to be intermingled with a profound sorrow and indeed guilt at the demise of an entire community and way of life. We cannot plausibly accumulate the combined stefana of all of our ancestors, we are not asked to do so and yet somewhere, somehow, we feel that we should, that just like their dictates while we were alive were often a burden to many of us, so too must we unconsciously accept that their memories should also be a burden to us, to be preserved without question, without critique, without evolution, in stasis, forever. And where we fail to preserve our own kin’s ephemera, the next best way of perpetuating the burden is to attach ourselves to the jettisoned story of someone else: finding and purchasing from an op-shop an old suitcase belonging to a deceased Greek migrant, with his address in Greece and destination in Melbourne hopefully inscribed on the front, or securing a glory box, despite the fact that we found the whole concept of the μπαούλο ridiculous in the eighties and nineties, that our progeny have absolutely no idea what we are talking about and that all these grave-goods consume all our storage space.

Despite the vitality of the migrant ethos, there has always been a strand of nihilism woven around it, one that calls into question our aspirations and hopes for future continuity, even as we attempt to lay down its foundations or perpetuate it as a community or as members of a family. In this, I liken our stefana as an ouroboric personification of ourselves: forever chasing our tail, only to devour it, but brilliantly so,  a symbol of cosmic harmony, eternity, and the cycle of birth and death, which is the lot of all of us and from which there is no escape.

In the Orthodox Funeral Service, Saint John of Damascus provides the basis for our ennui: “Vanity are all the works and quests of man, and they have no being after death has come; our wealth is with us no longer. How can our glory go with us? For when death has come all these things are vanished clean away.” “Crowned in glory and honour” as all of us are, we hastily remove our wedding crowns in order to hasten to the park for photos,  and to the reception for the benefit of the videographer, at the end of our wedding ceremonies, even though it is tradition for the Stefana to be worn for seven days after the wedding, a special prayer existing within the Orthodox tradition for the removal of the wedding crowns on the eighth day: “Bless them, as we dissolve these crowns, and preserve their union undissolved.” And as we purchase their effects, as we agonise over them and as we preserve them, and as our descendants discard ours and theirs, ours will be a union undissolved, even as our memories will dissolve.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 21 September 2024