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On the Tuesday following Easter in every alternate year, the women of Megara take part a traditional dance on the open space before the tiny church known as Saint John the Dancer. It is said to commemorate the building of this chapel in a single day.
To prevent the Turks from profiting from a spring on the site, which had the effect of making the women who drank from it very fertile, local people decided to secure it inside a church, but they needed the permission of the Turkish authorities to erect such a building.
By a clever stratagem they were able to convince the pasha in Corinth to allow them to build a small chapel, but only if the work could be completed within a single day. They told him that an evil djinn inhabited the spring. The pasha of Corinth did not want the inhabitants of his area troubled by evil spirits, and he thought that building a chapel over the spring would be sufficient to ensure that it would remain trapped inside. But he feared that if the Muslims of the area heard that the Christians were building a new chapel they would be outraged, and this would itself cause him trouble. So he warned the Christians that if they took longer than a single day to build it, they would lose their heads. In this way, the building would be finished before anyone could complain to him about it.
The Christians gathered together all their resources, and starting at dawn they succeeded in completing the building of the chapel in a single day. The famous dance, the Trata, is said to celebrate their success. However, folklorists note that the movements of the dance, performed by the young women, seem to indicate that it is probably a very ancient dance, which was originally performed to ensure success of the fishermen.
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