Abstract:

This paper uses rich ethnographic material deriving from fieldwork carried out by the author in Tarpon Springs, a small city in Florida boasting a significant Greek community with a background in sponge diving and the sponge trade. I look at the performance of the Epiphany ritual in this city, where about fifty Greek Orthodox American male adolescents aged 16-18 dive in the waters of Spring Bayou to retrieve the Cross cast by the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America every year on 6 January, in a reenactment of Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan. I analyse the ritual both historically and synchronically in order to show how it functions as a framework for the communal initiation of Greek Orthodox American adolescents into their roles as responsible members of their parishes and communities. When sponge diving was widely practised in Tarpon Springs, such adolescents used to dive for the Cross to secure good weather and calm seas for the sponge-boats. Today they continue to bring the blessing of the Church in symbolic terms to their community, which they do by diving for the Cross, by conducting a procession, in which the Cross is borne aloft, and by singing hymns in the Sponge Docks and in the Greek area of the city.