Every year around these days the same play is performed. The same articles, the same announcements, the same “concerns.” About Tsiknopempti (Barbecue Thursday). About what children are eating. About whether it smells like meat on the streets. About whether it “fits” in schools. About whether it “promotes the wrong messages.” And somewhere there always appears the same protagonist: the morally superior one — usually vegan, automatically animal-loving, permanently annoyed by anything that resembles tradition that hasn’t passed through an activism filter.
Suddenly, Tsiknopempti is labeled a problem. Not because it threatens health or safety, but because it doesn’t fit their ideological mold. Schools, they say, are not taverns. Correct. But neither are they spaces of ideological re-education, nor places where a minority choice becomes the rule for everyone. Nor halls of guilt because a child ate a souvlaki.
Tsiknopempti is not an obligation. No one drags children to grills. It is not even a matter of meat. It is a custom. It is collective memory. It is rhythm. It is the child understanding that society is not an Excel sheet and an instruction manual — that there are days that stand apart. And that, however much it bothers some people, is called life.
Here comes the familiar argument of “sensitivity”: for animals, for those who don’t eat meat, for those bothered by the smoke. No problem with personal choices. But since when did personal choice become the right to silence everyone else? Since when does the vegan decide that a centuries-old custom must disappear so they won’t feel uncomfortable? If you don’t eat meat, don’t eat. If you’re bothered, step away. That’s called coexistence — not censorship wrapped in ecological packaging.
The same people who talk about “respect for diversity” are those who cannot tolerate diversity when it doesn’t suit them — who demand acceptance but offer no tolerance, who wag their finger at children over what’s in their lunchbox while schools are falling apart, classrooms freezing, shortages covered with patience, and parents fundraising for basics.
And of course all this is called pedagogy — as if education were prohibitions rather than explanations; as if it were not an opportunity to teach a child that one person eats meat, another does not, and no one has the right to impose on another. Instead they prefer the safe “it’s not allowed”: the clean school without smells — sterile, odorless, harmless, and ultimately empty.
Tsiknopempti is not in danger. Neither encyclicals nor moral sermons will erase it. What is in danger is common sense. Because when you fear grilling smoke more than hypocrisy, then the problem is not the custom.
And yes — the grills will smoke. With meat, with vegetables, with laughter. With or without their approval.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
Suddenly, Tsiknopempti is labeled a problem. Not because it threatens health or safety, but because it doesn’t fit their ideological mold. Schools, they say, are not taverns. Correct. But neither are they spaces of ideological re-education, nor places where a minority choice becomes the rule for everyone. Nor halls of guilt because a child ate a souvlaki.
Tsiknopempti is not an obligation. No one drags children to grills. It is not even a matter of meat. It is a custom. It is collective memory. It is rhythm. It is the child understanding that society is not an Excel sheet and an instruction manual — that there are days that stand apart. And that, however much it bothers some people, is called life.
Here comes the familiar argument of “sensitivity”: for animals, for those who don’t eat meat, for those bothered by the smoke. No problem with personal choices. But since when did personal choice become the right to silence everyone else? Since when does the vegan decide that a centuries-old custom must disappear so they won’t feel uncomfortable? If you don’t eat meat, don’t eat. If you’re bothered, step away. That’s called coexistence — not censorship wrapped in ecological packaging.
The same people who talk about “respect for diversity” are those who cannot tolerate diversity when it doesn’t suit them — who demand acceptance but offer no tolerance, who wag their finger at children over what’s in their lunchbox while schools are falling apart, classrooms freezing, shortages covered with patience, and parents fundraising for basics.
And of course all this is called pedagogy — as if education were prohibitions rather than explanations; as if it were not an opportunity to teach a child that one person eats meat, another does not, and no one has the right to impose on another. Instead they prefer the safe “it’s not allowed”: the clean school without smells — sterile, odorless, harmless, and ultimately empty.
Tsiknopempti is not in danger. Neither encyclicals nor moral sermons will erase it. What is in danger is common sense. Because when you fear grilling smoke more than hypocrisy, then the problem is not the custom.
And yes — the grills will smoke. With meat, with vegetables, with laughter. With or without their approval.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
