Athens, Greece
by W. Ruth Kozak
One of my most memorable Christmases was the first Christmas I spent in Athens, Greece in December 1982. It was my first Christmas away from my family and without Santa Claus. Christmas the traditional Greek way was very different than I was used to but I managed to find some decorations and tiny lights, bought a small bay-leaf tree and made myself a Christmas tree.
In the shops around Omonia and Kolonaki Squares there wasn’t a sign of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman or Santa’s Helpers. On the streets the familiar bell-ringers with their red money pots for charity and the sound of recorded Noel carols were missing. Most of the window displays didn’t have festive decorations.
Up on busy Patission Street, the big Minion Dept. store had a mechanical children’s display, a few plastic Santas and some small ornamental trees with tiny coloured lights. There was a big Christmas tree decorated with lights and bright cardboard packages in Syntagma Square. Although some of the main streets were strung with little bulbs, there wasn’t a sign of Christmas tree lights twinkling from apartment windows. And on Christmas Eve, Santa wouldn’t find any stockings hung for him to fill. In Greece, except for those who have adopted the western customs of celebrating the Yule season, the traditions are different.
For most of the western world Christmas is the central festival of the year. In Greece, Easter is of greater importance. There may be pageantry and feasting at Christmas, but none of the pre-Christmas ‘hype’ that is experienced in the western world.
For those Greeks who observe the Orthodox festivals, a short lent The Fast of the Nativity, begins this season on Nov. 17 and ends on Christmas Eve. The Presentation of the Virgin Mary on Nov 31 is the most important feast day, especially for the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.
St. Nicholas isn’t the Greek Santa Claus; he is the patron saint of seamen. On Dec. 8 the little churches on the Greek Islands celebrate his day with the blessing of the ‘koliva’ a white dish made to honour the dead. This is taken on voyages to be thrown into the sea to calm stormy waters.
When the short lent, “Makree Sarakostis” ends on Christmas Eve, the Christmas bread, cakes and cookies are baked. Thee will be given to the children who come to sing the ‘kalanda’. These are the Greek carollers. Christopsomo, (hree-STOHP-soh-moh) means “Christ’s Bread,” and is a fixture in Greek Orthodox homes at Christmas. Except in homes where families celebrate western customs, the stockings are not hung on Christmas Eve. Gifts aren’t exchanged til New Years Day.
On Christmas morning, to the greeting of “Kala Hreestooyena: Merry Christmas” the family sits down to a traditional feast of delicious Greek foods and sweet. The most important feature of the day is the proportioning of the Christmas bread.
The real celebration begins on New Years Eve. It is a social evening when men play cards and gamble the night away, and children sing their carols, accompanied by the chiming of little silver triangles. Their favourite song is about Aghios Vassilis (St Basil). He will come, bringing paper and quill pens, because it is St. Basil who is the Santa Claus of Greece. St. Basil was one of the founders of the Greek Orthodox Church, famous as an educator and builder of hospitals and homes for the sick and friendless. The children singing about the benevolent Saint are rewarded with money and sweets.
On New Year’s Eve, as the bells chime in the new year, gifts are exchanged and glasses are clinked in the traditional toasts, a greeting common the world over: “Eftikhismenos oh Kaynooyio Kronios” – Happy New Year.
I was far away from my family and friends that Christmas in Greece, but it was a rich experience, one I will never forget.
Author’s Note: Today Christmas is a bit different in Greece than it was back when I spent my first Christmas away from home. Now almost everyone buys and decorates a Christmas tree, real or artificial. Greenery and branches were decorated in Greece around New Years as far back as antiquity. Sometimes little boats were decorated too.
If You Go To Greece For Christmas:
Traditional Greek Christmas carols
Christmas Traditions and Customs in Greece
About the author:
Ruth Kozak spent her first Christmas away from her home in Canada when she went to live in Athens, Greece in 1983. It was an experience she’s never forgotten. She remembers especially missing her family at home and the traditional Canadian turkey dinner on Christmas Day. Ruth lived in Greece most of the ‘80’s but after that first Christmas she usually went home to Canada. For more of her travel stories and blogs see www.ruthkozak.com
Photo Credits:
Athens Christmas decorations by Vouliagmeni / Public domain
Russian icon of Saint Nicholas by The original uploader was CulturalUniverse at English Wikipedia. / CC BY-SA
Madonna and child by Theophanes the Greek / Public domain
In the twenty-four years of my life I spent in Romania, I only once had the occasion to visit a unique region of Romania called Moldova and I was just nine years old then.
Entering the church, you are inclined to approach solemnly and humbly. Passing two separate stands that hold hundreds of thin yellow candles lit for the souls of the departed, you head slowly towards the altar, mesmerized by Byzantine-influenced icons and priests in holy attire. It was quite a thrill to be free to explore my own religion, free from the Communist regime which totally discouraged the population to go to church and believe in a higher power.
Vis was christened Issa by 4th century BC Greek settlers. The town site and well-protected harbor of Vis, off the Croatian coast, was once the most powerful Greek colony in the Adriatic Sea, a city state with its own rulers and currency.
Our guide was Jurica Zitko, a community leader and paragliding instructor. Dimar, our driver, worked for the San Georgio Hotel where we were staying and just happened to have a Land Rover. Perfect!
Today, the simple sign, “Tito’s Cave”, at the entrance, announces his former presence. About two hundred steps bring you to Tito’s meeting rooms; another hundred will take you to his living quarters. . Now, all we saw of past military occupation were a few strands of barbed wire, bent over by winds and neglect.
No signs announced the remains of Fort St. George built by the British in 1813 to guard the harbor. After vanquishing Napoleon in 1815, they abandoned the Fort to the elements. Parts of it have crumbled, but most of it, including walls and cannons are still intact. We were the only people there. It seems commercialization has not yet taken hold.
The inland villages, are very tiny—stone houses with red tile roofs surrounded by vineyards, olive trees and cattle. The vines wind around the hillside and over stone walls. It is totally unspoiled. Life revolves around wine, olive harvests, fishing and local festivals. Wild herbs, such as thyme, rosemary and lavender are hardy perennials.
Our headquarters, the San Giorgio Hotel in Kut, was a twenty-minute walk from Vis Town. It was July. Yachts pulled up and its occupants dined al fresco on the decks. Tourists can have their pick… sailing, snorkeling, and swimming. Not to mention exploring nearby coves and caves. (Sunken ships from the 1866 War are a great draw, also, subs and an airplane or two) Incredibly the water is so blue, you can almost see to the bottom. All the beaches are rocky, but no one seems to mind.
The ancient abbey rises out of sea and silt like the most triangular of mountains, seemingly balanced precariously on its rock without an inch of land wasted; and is big enough to be seen from the edge of its bay, over thirty kilometres (twenty miles) away. After I reached its public-access summit half way through my week-long holiday in France, Mont-St-Michel became the peak of my visit in more ways than one; a week that had started unplanned, and turned into an enjoyable trip down memory lane as well as one full of new sights.
I relived some of my traveling past by hiking about 10km from the airport to my hotel, on the southern edge of Saint-Malo. The local bus service does not cater for the airport. I crossed the Rance estuary below Saint-Servan, which was called Aleth when a Welsh monk called Maclow became its bishop in the 6th century. It was from Maclow that a new community to the north took its name; Saint-Malo has since incorporated Saint-Servan within its city boundaries. Brittany still has a Celtic identity.
The next day I moved to Saint-Malo’s only hostel, which is ideally situated only two blocks from the Grand Plage: two miles of beach between the walled old town and the district of Parame. There hadn’t been any room at the hostel on the Saturday night. I spent the next couple of days getting to know the landmarks and beaches of Saint-Malo.
At low tide you can walk out to Fort National, Île du Grand Bé and Fort du Petit Bé. The former was built during the reign of Louis XIV in the late 17th century, and was named Fort Royale until the French Revolution a century later. It is open to visitors during the summer. Malouin writer Chateaubriand, cited as the founder of French Romanticism, is buried on Île du Grand Bé; a hilltop cross marks the site, and views stretching for miles to the western edge of the bay explain its Romantic reason.
The cathedral is a central landmark and highlight, rising high above streets full of gift and clothes shops; crepe and seafood restaurants. Museums, a twentieth-century war memorial, and a central park are also of interest within the city walls; and regular plaques tell the historical significance of streets and buildings. Exiting the walls to the south, corsair sailing ships in the harbour are another reminder of the past.
I took the coach from Saint-Malo to Mont-St-Michel at 9.15 the next morning. It is the only bus on that route, and a 20 Euros return ticket is required. The journey takes 75 minutes, and with the return leaving at 15.45 you have about five hours at the Mont. You cross from Brittany to Normandy on the journey.
There were grey skies when we arrived, but the view was still spectacular. I walked up the narrow winding streets crammed with shops and tourists to the abbey gift shop, where you buy a ticket to enter the abbey and highest tier possible. On the ascent, the causeway linking the Mont with the mainland stretches out to the south, between the grey silt of low tide sea and the green vegetation of natural land; dividing the bay arcing to the east and west. To the north there is only the abbey towering above you, crowned by a golden Saint Michel statue.
On my penultimate day I took the local bus to the quiet town of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, via Dinard, traveling north of the airport; and spent my final day among the gift shops of Saint-Malo. I walked down memory lane once more before leaving, entering the airport the same way I’d exited it the week before. Although this time I only walked from Dinard, after busing it across the Rance.
It is a sunny spring morning, perfect for a trip to Glendalough, an ancient “monastic city” set in a surround of Wicklow Mountains National Park, about an hour south of Dublin. Our local guide keeps us alert on the bus ride, pointing out the flora and fauna–the beauty of the yellow gorse which in other non-flowering seasons gets pelted with words such as weed, invasive, and noxious, the blossoming white thorn hedges, shades of green in the long vistas. As we zoom past farms and real estate signs, she chats about the state of the nation in this time of recession. “People cannot sell their properties; their mortgages are worth more than their houses. There is no longer a construction industry.”
But the Roman church had crossed the choppy waters of the Irish Sea. Representatives had been dispatched from Rome in the 400s and the escaped slave Patrick had returned as a missionary in that same century. Glendalough was established in the early 500s by Coemgen (Caoimhin), St. Kevin. His Gaelic name means “fair-begotten.” Does it refer to his royal Irish birth or to his good looks? As a child, Kevin was tutored by Petroc of Cornwall, a Welsh-born Irish-educated saint. Kevin lived and studied with the monks and was eventually ordained himself.
What compels me to forgo another day in Dublin for this side trip into the country? Being neither Irish nor Catholic nor even very religious, what can explain my interest in, my attraction to, this site? I have been to one of these ancient monasteries before–to Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon. Is it nostalgia, for that much earlier life-changing visit? It was from the friend who guided me to Clonmacnoise that I learned how to pronounce Glendalough. Glen da lock (loch). Not loo; it does not rhyme with slough, as I had incorrectly assumed that first time. Glenn da locha, the valley of the two lakes. The two communities were connected in the sixth century, by the friendship of Ceiran and Kevin. Both locations feature thirty-metre-tall round towers, thought to have been used like beacons, for navigating, as bell towers to signal distress, as safe storage for valuables such as psalters and illuminated manuscripts, and as places of refuge during times of attack. The monasteries include hermit cells, probably the only constructs that either saint actually touched. St. Kevin’s is a cave above the lake. The chapel, St. Kevin’s Kitchen, the rest of the existing ruins, date from between the ninth and twelfth centuries.
Both monasteries contain a collection of ruined buildings with designations such as cathedral, church, chapel, along with a profusion of Celtic crosses and gravestones. Here those who found a community while living are surrounded still in a community of the dead. Both sites have high crosses–the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnoise and St. Kevin’s Cross at Glendalough, and evidently, a second high cross, the Market Cross, in the visitor centre.
Just outside the double-arched gateway is a midway of tents and caravans. Linen tea towels, woolen “jumpers,” potato scones, postcards. Today the market of souvenir and food vendors does not even make me think of the temple and the moneylenders. After all, everyone has to eat, and it is a recession, and loaves and fishes no longer magically appear.
