History
The origins of koliva predate Christianity. The word koliva itself stems from the Ancient Greek word κόλλυβo (kollyvo), which originally meant cereal grain. In the Ancient Greek panspermia, a mixture of cooked seeds and nuts were offered during the pagan festival of the Anthesteria. For this reason, in Greece koliva is also called sperma (i.e., "seeds").
The 12th century canonist Theodore Balsamon maintained that the practice was originated by Athanasius of Alexandria during the reign of the Emperor Julian the Apostate.
The association between death and life, between that which is planted in the ground and that which emerges, is deeply embedded in the making and eating of koliva. The ritual food passed from paganism to early Christianity in Byzantium and later spread to the entire Orthodox world.
Read more about this topic: Koliva
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)