The tradition originated in the late 1800s in Kosti, a small town a few miles from the Black Sea in what’s now Bulgaria, said Gkaintatzis, whose ancestors are from Kosti. His family was among the ethnic Greeks forcefully relocated to the region near Thessaloniki in the population exchanges driven by the Balkan Wars a century ago.
When the church of Saints Constantine and Helen in Kosti burned down, villagers walked through the flames to rescue the icons. They were unscathed, believing it was the result of the saints’ miraculous intercession.
The three-day festival centers on May 21 – this year the date of Greece’s widely watched national elections. For Orthodox Christians, it is the feast day of two of their most important saints, Constantine and his mother Helen.
Constantine, a 4th-century Roman emperor, converted to Christianity and laid the foundations for the Byzantine Empire, one of history’s most significant global powers whose imprint deeply marks this region.
But the Orthodox church long persecuted the anastenaria’s devotion, seeing in the dancing and firewalking traces of pagan rites, said Loring Danforth, an anthropology professor emeritus at Bates College in Maine who wrote a book about the rites. Even today priests tend to look askance and avoid participating in the celebrations.
The participants, however, are quick to emphasize their closeness to Christian doctrine. They’re also eager to preserve the mystery of their unique manifestation of faith, which this week was evident in the rapt expressions as they prepared to carry icons onto the coals.
“It’s a charisma to walk on fire. It cannot be interpreted or taught,” Gkaintatzis said, emphasizing what several other firewalkers referred to as a calling or duty they were mysteriously granted. “You feel an inner strength.”
http://www.ekathimerini.com/culture/1211972/firewalkers-honor-saint-constantine-in-mystery-shrouded-centuries-old-rituals/
See if “evangelicals” can do that in their ….megachurches. 
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