Greece's Biggest Summer Travel Day

In Greece, 15 August functions as both the country's most important religious feast of the summer and one of its largest annual domestic travel days, comparable in practical effect to a national bank holiday concentrated on a single date: businesses across much of the country close, ferries and roads to island and coastal destinations are at their busiest of the year, and many Greeks travel to their family village or island of origin specifically to attend the Dormition liturgy at a local church or, in some cases, a major regional pilgrimage site, most notably the church of the Panagia Evangelistria on the island of Tinos, which draws large national pilgrimage crowds, including some pilgrims who traditionally crawl from the port to the church as an act of devotion.

This combination of intense religious observance and mass domestic tourism movement makes the day a significant logistical event for Greek transport authorities and businesses each year, a civic and economic dimension of the feast that has no real equivalent in most Western countries keeping the corresponding Assumption feast on the same date, where 15 August, though often a public holiday, does not generally coincide with anything like the same scale of nationwide travel and pilgrimage activity.