Alexandre Papadiamantis

This short story by Alexandros Papadiamantis, published on December 25, 1904 in the Greek newspaper *Metarrythmisis* and translated here into French for the first time, depicts Christmas Eve in the village of Skiathos through a gallery of colorful characters. The narrative follows Aunt Mario, nicknamed "Délissyféro," a combative old woman who defends her spot in the church, as well as two elderly parishioners whose sharp exchanges enliven the matins service. Far from picturesque folklore, the story renders from the inside the liturgical life of popular Greek Orthodoxy, blending the sacred and the everyday with ethnographic precision and ironic tenderness. Its contribution lies in the way Papadiamantis, through concrete and embodied scenes, reveals the presence of eternity at the heart of the most ordinary human experience, bearing witness to a lived ecclesiology particular to the Orthodox tradition.

This article presents a short story by Alexandros Papadiamantis, translated here into French for the first time, devoted to the pilgrimage to the church of Our Lady of Kéchreia during the nine-day fast of the Dormition. The text belongs to the autobiographical narrative genre, blending accounts of daily life with an Orthodox liturgical atmosphere. The central idea lies in the tension between an unfulfilled religious vow and the spontaneous impulse of a nocturnal departure, revealing the way in which popular devotion is woven into the ordinary fabric of existence. The contribution of this short story is to restore, with notable iconographic precision — particularly the description of the icon of the Dormition and its panels depicting Cosmas and John of Damascus — the inner world of the Greek Orthodox liturgical tradition, far from any folkloric exoticism, in its simultaneously human and eschatological dimension.