Author: Carol Cattell
As many of you will know, I’m an Englishwoman living in Greece for most of the year, including during Christmas and New Year.
The Greek customs at Christmas and New Year are different. Some are familiar, some are a mixture of Greek and Western European, and some are quite frankly very odd.
Christmas Day itself is rated as less important than New Year. There are presents but these are opened at midnight on New Year’s Eve, not on Christmas Day. They are delivered magically by an old man with a white beard and a red robe who is not Santa Claus or even St. Nicholas, but Agios Vasilis (St. Basil) whose Name Day is 1st January. It is still acceptable to give cigarettes and cigars as presents.
There are no Christmas puddings or Christmas cakes or mince pies, but there are delicious traditional biscuits and sweetmeats and Christmas bread with almonds and honey.
On New Year’s Eve, a special cake is made called a Vasilopita (Basil cake) with a coin baked into it. At midnight, the cake is divided: the first piece is always for God, and the rest between everyone present. Whoever finds the coin in their piece has luck for the rest of the year. Strangely, God never gets the coin.
Throughout the twelve days of Christmas, Greek houses are decorated inside and out with fairy lights, evergreen branches, and sprigs of basil. Christmas trees are not traditional; instead a model of a boat – often remarkably detailed and beautiful – is placed in a prominent position and decorated with lights.
Pomegranates are used both as decoration and to bring fertility, wealth and luck: on New Year’s Eve when the Northern British might have ‘first footing’, the Greeks smash a pomegranate on the doorstep.
Most notably, during the twelve days of Christmas ending with Epiphany on 6 January, the whole of Greece is plagued by mischievous and sometimes malevolent gnome-like creatures called kallikantzaroi who have swarmed up from the underworld to wreak havoc on festivities. They urinate in the wine, they stamp out the fire in the hearth, they spoil the food, and they frighten the children. It’s as if they don’t want human beings to enjoy themselves. We use garlic and holy basil, prayers, light, music and dance to keep them away.
On the morning of Epiphany, our priest (Pappas) holds a service at the harbour and the whole village turns out. Epiphany is in memory of Christ’s baptism, and also of Christ’s turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. Pappas blesses the waters, he blesses the fishing boats, he blesses us, he blesses everything in sight. He also curses any evil influences, and all the kallikantzaroi flee back underground until next year.
Then he throws a cross into the water and the young men of the village dive in and compete to be the one to find it and return it to the Pappas. It’s a great honour for the winner and his family. Afterwards we all go off to drink coffee and ouzo and smoke cigarettes at the local cafes while the victorious youth and his friends make the rounds to receive our congratulations.
What has all this to do with freedom 2 choose, you may ask?
Well, the antis to me are like the kallikantzaroi, creeping from the underworld and spoiling everyone’s fun. Sometimes we mock them (there is a rather sweet one on top of our Christmas ‘tree’, see the photo above); and sometimes we have to get the Pappas out to banish them, but in the end we Greeks just ignore them for most of the year and get on with enjoying life.
Here is a photo of me enjoying life in our local bar, after the smoking ban. Yes, that is ouzo in the foreground. I’m the one on the right dancing with a cigarette in my mouth. It’s not a very good photo because of the smoke haze. But it is very Greek.