From June until September, at Greek churches across New England, the same thing happens every summer. The tents come out of storage. The knives get sharpened for the gyro. The ovens are turned up for the festival menu, and somewhere in a parish hall, folding tables are wiped down and set end to end, waiting to hold more spanakopita than any one kitchen should be able to make. It has gone on this way for decades, in towns that otherwise have no reason to know what loukoumades are.
These parish festivals, weekend fundraisers built around home cooking, dancing, and live music, help small Greek Orthodox communities cover their costs and share their culture with the towns around them.
This year, at St George Greek Orthodox Church of Cape Cod, in Centerville, Massachusetts, the tables were set by a man who did not grow up Greek at all.
Tom Benton married into the church, and after many years attending it, he was received into Greek Orthodoxy himself four years ago. Now he is president of the parish council. A core group of volunteers has run the festival for years, but with no one stepping forward this year to co-chair it, Benton’s job was to help keep everyone working together for the mid-July event.
