Gus Portokalos in Big Fat Greek Wedding made a point of talking about “the history of our people,” at the dinner table, to the neighbours, and to the “lucky” future son-in-law getting baptised into the Greek Orthodox Church, whose “ancestors were singing in trees while Greeks were writing philosophy.”Īdd in the Greek Orthodox Church, the costumes, parades, Greek School (if you indulged in this), and you had a sort of timeline. Dinner table historical conversations are a Greek pastime. The date of 29 May, when heroic Constantinople finally fell to the Turks, always merits a discussion. We often talk about history around the table.
