Celebration of the Greek Revolution of 1821
The celebration of the Greek Revolution of 1821 takes place in Greece, Cyprus and around the world by the Greeks of the Diaspora on March 25 every year, the day of celebration and the Annunciation of the Holy Mary. This day is an official holiday in Greece and Cyprus. Celebrations usually include parades and other celebrations on the same day or the day before.
The biggest events are a military parade in Athens on March 25th and in Thessaloniki respectively, while the previous one, on March 24th, is a student holiday in the country’s schools. In other municipalities there are parades of military units, students, clubs, etc. as well as eulogies in temples.
The celebration on this day was established in 1838 by Royal Decree 980/15 (27) -3-1838 by the Government of Otto.
March 25, the day of the Annunciation, was designated as the day of the beginning of the Greek Revolution, against the Turkish yoke, by the leader of the Friendly Society Alexandros Ypsilantis “as evangelizing the political redemption of the Greek nation”. already the first days of the Revolution, and even as the beginning of a special dating, even in areas that had revolted earlier. At least since 1823 it was considered in the Peloponnese as the day of the beginning of the revolution
In 1822, the provisional government based in Corinth decided to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution with Easter (April 2, old). The celebration took place in Corinth with a military procession, solemn eulogy and cannon fire, as described by the German volunteer Striebeck who attended.
According to the author D. Fotiadis and others, January 1 was considered a national holiday before 1838, a date on which the 1st Greek “Syntagma”, ie “Provisional Government”, was voted by the 1st National Assembly of Piada (Nea Epidaurus). It is therefore believed that by changing the date, “the national holiday lost its political and revolutionary character and took on a religious connotation” with all that implied for the claims to democracy and constitution. The historian Chr. Koulouris, who has been researching national holiday celebrations since 1834, does not include January 1st but six dates related to the royal family. The main holiday before the introduction of March 25 was January 25, the anniversary of the landing of Otto in Nafplio (1833).
The leader of the Friendly Society that organized the Revolution, Alexandros Ypsilantis, started the operations and its beginning in Iasi on February 24, 1821. Nevertheless, the events there were characterized by the common consciousness and were established by history as something individual, something like preface to the Revolution. The complete failure of the movement in a non-Greek country, perhaps the frustration of the Greeks for the mistake about the support from Russia spread by the F. Company, were the main reasons for the separation of the Moldavian events from the revolutionary events in Greece. . The State ratified the prevailing national feeling by establishing March 25 as the day of national celebration of the Revolution.
In some respects, the date of the beginning of the Revolution is considered to be February 24, when the Greek revolution in Wallachia began with the proclamation of Alexander the Great Fighting for Faith and Homeland. Since then, with other revolutionary acts that took place long before March 25, the revolution spread to Greece, until it ended in the territory of the Peloponnese.
In Greece, hostilities had begun before March 25, as evidenced by the news rescued in the “Correspondence of the Dutch Consulate in Patras: 1821”, as the Dutch government through its consul in Patras was informed on March 23 that At that time, a dangerous situation broke out and the Greeks took up arms against the tyrant “.
The official proclamation of the revolutionaries to the foreign governments was made with the proclamation of the “Messinian Senate” on March 25, 1821. March 25 is considered the beginning of the Revolution in a court document of the Provisional Administration of Greece of 1823, where the “District Criterion of Tripoli” ( type of judiciary) states that “the apostasy followed on 25 March”.
Also an popular song for the Greeks people is “But I am a Greek” Singer-Notis Sfakianakis. Link below:
from Wikipedia
