The sun that warms, the sun that illuminates, the sun that nurtures…

At times you catch yourself daydreaming of a sunny place, wanting to enjoy the sun’s rays on your skin and fill your eyes with the light.

Greece is a holy place, bathed in light. Its people are warm, bright, and happy, like the sun. Free people, who speak loudly, shake hands with intensity, love with body and soul, creating lifetime bonds.

Great writers and poets have sought inspiration from the sun’s power.

In the mouth of Nikos Kazantzakis, the sun is the idea of hope that lights up people’s minds. “You must become the sun to illuminate the extinguished suns of others. There are no ideas, there are only people who carry the ideas, and they take the height of the person who carries them.” Enlightened people who will act as a source of light for the rest, as a source of inspiration and guidance.

In the verse of Nobel awarded, Odysseus Elytis, from his magnificent work “Axion esti”, (“Worth as it”), with the music of the great Mikis Theodorakis the sun is the idea that illuminates the truth, the sun that renders justice, “Notional sun of justice”, Grigoris Bithikotsis sings in a doric voice leading Greeks to associate this song with the period of the dictatorship and the students’ struggles for freedom and democracy.

In the verses of Nikephoros Vrettakos, the preeminent praiser of the sun and love, “The human is a solar system. All my cells are lakes that give off light” says the poet, meaning that the sun is the man himself, it’s the material of which man is made of.

For the Greeks, the sun symbolizes hope in difficult historical moments, the coming of spring in the heart of winter. The sun motivates them to claim their freedom, to show militancy and rebelliousness through historical difficult times.

But they also owe to the sun their open-hearted characters, their philanthropic soul that is always willing to gladly welcome every stranger who comes from afar, to take care of him and proudly show him their homeland.

The sun symbolizes the strength and lightness of Greece!

Giovanna GR☀️