Kalos orsisate means “welcome” in Greek. And Fayetteville’s Greek community is pleased to kalos orsisate the region back to the Fayetteville Greek Festival, the weekend of Sept. 17 and 18 at the Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church, located at 614 Oakridge Avenue.

The Fayetteville Greek festival isn’t just a virtual journey to the Acropolis of Athens; Mount Olympus, the Home of the Gods; Thermopylae, the ancient sulfuric spring where Sparta fought Persia to death; or some better-known landmarks. It’s about the “cultural traditions” of an entire country, said festival spokesperson Lia Hasapis, who is in Greece on a research trip.

Greece is a peninsula situated at the southeastern tip of Europe, at the bottom of the Balkan Mountains, stretching in to the Mediterranean, Aegean and Ionian Seas via a countless number of islands. Connected to Turkey by a strip of land in the northeast, the country was a pivotal crossroad between Africa, Asia and Europe that has been inhabited by modern human-beings thousands of years before the birth of Jesus Christ.
Centered by Athens, its most powerful city-state, between the years 323 B.C. and 31 B.C., Greece was the “cradle of western civilization,” the epicenter for the beginnings of democracy, historiography, philosophy, literature, architecture and astronomy, as the world remembers them.

“The Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church is a small [Greek] community made up [of people] from all regions of Greece, from the mountains of Evrytania to the Sea of the Peloponnese ... all the way to Macedonia, and not to mention all the beautiful Greek isles,” Hasapis said.

The Fayetteville Greek Festival is free to the public. However, though the menu is authentic, food and drinks are not free. Greek spirits, domestic beers and soft drinks will be offered, and, please remember that dessert is the biggest portion of the festival’s menu.

The legendary Greek culture, hospitality and food “is what ... the Greek community ... would love for you all to experience,” Hasapis added.
Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church will give free grounds tours. The festivities will be in the “Hellenic Room” between the hours of 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 17, and from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18.

This year’s Greek Festival will be the first in-person Greek festival since the beginning of the pandemic, and Fayetteville’s very own Greek community couldn’t be happier to showcase the best of what makes the southeastern European nation the cradle of western civilization.

Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church is at 614 Oakridge Avenue, at the end of Oakridge, if you’re coming from the top Haymount Hill. Bear in mind that Oakridge Avenue begins at the Hay Street intersection, directly across Hay Street from the Cape Fear Regional Theatre. Note that Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church is at the end of the Oakridge, on the right.

To find out more about the 2022 Fayetteville Greek Festival, its menu and mission, surf the internet on over to www.FayGreekChurch.com or Facebook.com/pages/category/Nonprofit-organization/FayGreekFest.