Greek Christmas customs

The Greek Orthodox Church is celebrating Christmas on the 25th December,
on the same date as the Catholic and Protestant Churches.

Traditions about the Kallikantzaroi vary from region to region, but in general they are half-animal, half-human monsters, black, hairy, with huge heads, glaring red eyes, goats' or asses' ears, blood-red tongues hanging out, ferocious tusks, monkeys' arms, and long curved nails, and commonly they have the foot of some beast. "From dawn till sunset they hide themselves in dark and dank places .., but at night they issue forth and run wildly to and fro, rending and crushing those who cross their path. Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course." When a house is not prepared against their coming, "by chimney and door alike they swarm in, and make havoc of the home; in sheer wanton mischief they overturn and break all the furniture, devour the Christmas pork, befoul all the water and wine and food which remains, and leave the occupants half dead with fright or violence." Many like or far worse pranks do they play, until at the crowing of the third cock they get them away to their dens. The signal for their final departure does not come until the Epiphany, when the "Blessing of the Waters" takes place. Some of the hallowed water is put into vessels, and with these and with incense the priests sometimes make a round of the village, sprinkling the people and their houses.

Besides this ecclesiastical purification there are various Christian precautions against the Kallikantzaroi - e.g., to mark the house-door with a black cross on Christmas Eve, the burning of incense and the invocation of the Trinity - and a number of other means of aversion: the lighting of the Yule (= Christmas time) log, a large log of wood called a skakantzalos, the burning of something that smells strong (sometime the Greeks will also burn old shoes, the smell of which keeps the wicked elves away), and - perhaps as a peace-offering - the hanging of pork-bones, sweetmeats, or sausages in the chimney.

Just as men are sometimes believed to become vampires temporarily during their lifetime, so, according to one stream of tradition, do living men become Kallikantzaroi. In Greece children born at Christmas are thought likely to have this objectionable characteristic as a punishment for their mothers' sin in bearing them at a time sacred to the Mother of God. In Macedonia people who have a "light" guardian angel undergo the hideous transformation.

Many attempts have been made to account for the Kallikantzaroi. Perhaps the most plausible explanation of the outward form, at least, of the uncanny creatures, is the theory connecting them with the masquerades that formed part of the winter festival of Dionysus and are still to be found in Greece at Christmastide. The hideous bestial shapes, the noise and riot, may well have seemed demoniacal to simple people slightly "elevated," perhaps, by Christmas feasting, while the human nature of the maskers was not altogether forgotten. Another theory of an even more prosaic character has been propounded that the Kallikantzaroi are nothing more than established nightmares, limited like indigestion to the twelve days of feasting. This view is taken by Allatius, who says that a Kallikantzaros has all the characteristics of nightmare, rampaging abroad and jumping on men's shoulders, then leaving them half senseless on the ground."

Such theories are ingenious and suggestive, and may be true to a certain degree, but they hardly cover all the facts. It is possible that the Kallikantzaroi may have some connection with the departed; they certainly appear akin to the modern Greek and Slavonic vampire, "a corpse imbued with a kind of half-life," and with eyes gleaming like live coals. They are, however, even more closely related to the werewolf, a man who is supposed to change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is to be noted that "man-wolves" is the very name given to the Kallikantzaroi in southern Greece, and that the word Kallikantzaros itself has been conjecturally derived by Bernhard Schmidt from two Turkish words meaning "black" and "werewolf." The connection between Christmas and werewolves is not confined to Greece. According to a belief not yet extinct in the north and east of Germany, even where the real animals have long ago been extirpated, children born during the Twelve Nights become werewolves, while in Livonia and Poland that period is the special season for the werewolf's ravenings.

Those who wish to pursue further the study of the Kallikantzaroi should read the elaborate and fascinating, if not altogether convincing, theories of Mr. J. C. Lawson in his "Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion." He distinguishes two classes of Kallikantzaroi, one of which he identifies with ordinary werewolves, while the other is the type of hairy, clawed demons above described. He sets forth a most ingenious hypothesis connecting them with the Centaurs.

Excerpted from Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan, by Clement A. Miles, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 2nd Ed. 1913, pp. 229-247.

The Greek Festival of Epiphany, or 'The Blessing of the Waters', is held every year on January 6 throughout all of Greece. This is the special occasion when many daring young Greek men brave the chilly waters to dive for a cross after it has been blessed by a priest and thrown into the water. For his gallantry, the first man who recovers the cross is said to have good luck throughout the coming year. The day long festival also features the blessing of small boats and ships, and later on affords entertainment, music, dancing and food to all those present.

December 1st, 2005 - Christmas cheer

Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyannis yesterday announced the program of Christmas events for the city center, which is to open on December 15 when the lights on the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square will be switched on. This year's Christmas program will include a «Gift City» at Kotzia Square, an ice rink at the Zappeion Mansion and carousels at Omonia Square, Bakoyannis said. A total of 1.3 million euros is being spent on this year's festivities, she said.

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - December 5, 2006

City of Athens to spend 1.5 million euros on events for festive season

The City of Athens will spend 1.5 million euros on decorating the city center and organizing events for Christmas, Athens Mayor Theodoros Behrakis said yesterday. The outgoing mayor said that the lights on the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square will be switched on in nine days. A 120-year-old carousel will also be set up in the square for children to ride. A smaller carousel will operate in Kotzia Square from December 16. A giant snowman in front of Zappeion Hall will house the “workshop of fun,” Behrakis said. The municipality has also organized three New Year’s Eve concerts at Syntagma, Kotzia and Klafthmonos squares.

Yuletide joy - 6 December, 2007

Christmas festivities in Athens, including open-air concerts and other cultural events, are to begin on December 13 and continue until January 6, City Hall officials said yesterday. Central Syntagma Square will be the focus of most activities while the National Garden will be transformed into a «magical village» with guides dressed as elves showing visitors around, officials said. Activities are also planned for several other squares including Omonia, Karaiskaki and at the Panathenaic Stadium.

Christmas on Syntagma Square, Athens 2007

Christmas tree brings glitz to capital - 14 December, 2009

A couple embraces under the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square after a lighting ceremony on Friday. The lights there, and in other roads and squares, gave the city a much-needed facelift as municipal workers started gathering piles of trash from the streets. Workers ended three weeks of strike action after a court deemed it illegal.

From: Kathimerini

The event "Christmas - New Year 2013-2014", organized by the Municipality of Chania

Crib at Christmas Tree in Chania town, 2014

The Christmas Pig

In Crete it was formerly the custom for every household in the village to fatten a pig, the "swine" (chíros) as it was called. The pig was slautered on Christmas Eve and on Christmas was the main dish.

On the second day of Christmas, the villagers cut the meat of the pig and they made:

• • Sausages (loukánika)
• • Apákia: smoked meat
• • Thick jelly (tsiladiá): all traces of meat were removed from the head of the pig and all boiled together. The broth with special preparation turns into a thick jelly with inside pieces of meat.
• • Sýglina, ie meat of pig cut into small pieces, which were smoked and put in large containers and covered with melted fat of the animal. The fat clots, soon after the heat of the meat was gone, thus can be maintained for several months.
• • Omathiés, pig intestines stuffed with rice, raisins and chopped liver.
• • Tsigarídes, fat pieces cooked with spices and eaten with bread, for a snack in the countryside, where they were harvesting the olives.

The Christmas Pig was the main source of meat for several weeks. The rest of the year the Cretans kept a diet extremely low in meat, the famous Cretan diet (Mediterranean diet), that gave the Cretans of decades longlasting health and longevity.

Nothing is wasted from the Christmas pig, for each piece of the animal had its use. Even its bladder, the "foúska" as it is called, was washed and cleaned and then inflated to become a ball, a valuable gift for children of that era.

Boat vs tree: A conflict of Christmas cultures in Greece

‘ Imported tradition’ being abandoned for quintessential Greek symbol

Greeks are increasingly turning to decorating small Christmas boats instead of trees, considered an imported tradition, in the mistaken belief they are reviving an old Greek custom.

“We are slowly abandoning Christmas trees, which are considered a foreign custom, and turning to ships instead,” said Erika Vallianou, a journalist from the western island of Cephalonia.

“It’s part of a general trend to revive old customs. We are trying to recover the island’s distinct color that was lost when all our buildings collapsed in a big earthquake in 1953,” she said.

Cephalonians have even set up a citizens’ group to promote the boats and its results are already evident. “Every Christmas, more and more boats appear in banks, hotels and shops,” Vallianou told AFP. Sparing the island’s unique population of black fir trees is put forward as a further argument in favor of the vessels.

The Christmas boats are made of paper or wood, decorated with small, colorful lamps and a few, simple ornaments. They are usually placed near the outer door or by the fire and the bow should always point to the interior of the house. With golden objects or coins placed in it, the ship symbolizes a full load of riches reaching one’s home. And the Christmas boat is making inroads into mainland Greece.

Every December, Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki, erects a huge, illuminated metal structure in the shape of a three-mast ship next to the Christmas tree in its main Aristotelous Square.

“The Town Hall introduced the ship in 1999. Thessaloniki is a port city and we thought this would show appreciation for the role the sea played in the city’s economy,” said Thessaloniki Municipal Councilor Vassilis Gakis.

“Our ship was the first of its kind in Greece. Many other municipalities are adopting it, but their models are not as big as ours,” he told AFP.

Even the vast majority of Greeks who continue to stick to the Christmas tree consider it a foreign import. The modern Christmas tree entered Greece in the luggage of the country’s first king, Otto of Bavaria, who ascended to the throne in 1833 but the tree did not become popular before the 1940s.

The ship, by contrast, is viewed as a quintessential Greek symbol. Greeks have been seafarers for thousands of years and the country is today one of the world’s mightiest shipping nations.

But scholars are skeptical about the ships’ Christmas role. “Ships are not Christmas trees,” said Dimitris Loukatos, one of Greece’s most important ethnographers, as early as 1975. “Though it is true that children on the islands sang Christmas carols holding illuminated model boats in their laps,” Loukatos said.

For children, they served as a lantern in the dark or as a box for presents collected in return for singing carols. “But in other parts of the country, children held other symbolic objects, such as miniature models of the Saint Sophia Church in Constantinople (Istanbul),” said Loukatos.

“Using boats as Christmas ships is a new-fangled development,” Ekaterini Kamilaki, president of the Hellenic Folklore Research Center told AFP.

The Christmas tree, assumed to be foreign, may even have some Greek roots. Use of decorated greenery and branches around New Year is recorded as far back as in Greek antiquity, as it is in other pre-Christian cultures.

Tree branches and green bushes called “Christwood” always had a place in Christian households during the medieval Byzantine and Ottoman empires. “Whether its enemies like it or not, it is certain that the Christmas tree existed in the Byzantine Empire,” Kamilaki said, citing historical evidence from fifth-century-AD northern Syria. “We don’t want to ban the Christmas tree. It has roots in mountainous Greece,” said Gakis, explaining why the tree and the boat coexist in Thessaloniki’s Aristotelous Square.

Real vs fake trees - 21 December, 2007

Are artificial Christmas trees more environmentally friendly than real firs? A Corfu man has asked municipal officials to remove the tree they have erected in front of his cafe, which serves organic food and drink. Others claim real trees bearing the approved seals do in fact benefit the environment, as they are grown on tree farms, creating a source of income for mountain villages.

From: Ekathimerini