St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral (Tarpon Springs, Florida)

[1] St. Nicholas hosts an annual Epiphany celebration on January 6, in which Greek Orthodox boys aged 16 to 18 dive into Spring Bayou to retrieve a white wooden cross, said to bring the finder blessings for the year.

[4][5] Noted features of the cathedral include 23 stained glass windows surrounding the dome depicting episodes in the life of Jesus and the saints, hand-painted by Joseph V. Llorens of Atlanta, and the 60-ton altar, made of Pentelic marble.

[8] The community traces its history to John Cocoris, a native of Leonidio in Arcadia, Greece, who settled in the area in 1896 and became a prosperous sponge diver and trader.

[3] St. Nicholas was by then a significant center of community life, with major festivals surrounding Epiphany, Greek Independence Day and Orthodox Easter.

[3] In January 2006, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the primus inter pares of the Eastern Orthodox Church, came to St. Nicholas to preside over the Centennial Epiphany service and to throw the cross during the dive.