Commercial pressures have succeeded in inflating Christmas into an event of some importance in Greece, with both shops and private dwellings displaying strings of lights, erecting Christmas trees and playing secular Christmas songs. The phenomenon is recent, having grown mainly over the past 15 years or so, and it is Easter that remains the primary event of the Orthodox calendar. It is the time when families return to their villages of origin, go to Church and eat large quantities of roast lamb on Easter Monday – although fewer and fewer families can afford to buy a whole lamb to roast on the spit as was formerly the tradition.