How Greeks Celebrate Christmas

Greek people have many specific Christmas traditions, but there are also many similarities to other western countries, especially as more commercialized ways of celebration are starting to become more common. Although, for them, Christmas is a very religious holiday and everybody are aware of the story of Christ as well as of the fact that Christmas isn’t about the presents, but about celebrating the birth of Christ. It’s a solemn and religious celebration, but at the same time it’s also festive and glamorous.

 

St. Nicholas is very important in Greece as the patron saint of sailors, celebrated on the 6th December. This is the beginning of the festive Christmas season in Greece.

In Greece, village children go from house to house singing “Kalanda”, meaning carols, on Christmas Eve. They often also play the village’s local instrument to accompany these songs, but the most common instrument used by most children is the small metal triangle. The children are rewarded with money, sweets or dry fruits. On the islands they also have an old custom of carrying small model boats, decorated with golden nuts, when they wander through the villages.

Christmas morning begins with an early Mass at the Greek Orthodox Church. In Christmas Eve, most families have adopted the western tradition of having a stuffed roast turkey, along with roast potatoes and vegetables and a salad. A few decades ago the main Greek Christmas meal was pork. For dessert the Greeks either have a delicious dessert from a cake shop, or some of the traditional cookies. One of the most popular are “melomakaronas”, cookies with the traditional flavors of cinnamon, clove and orange, dizzled with aromatic honey syrup and sprinkled with walnuts. Another popular sort of cookies is “kourabiethes”, sugar and almond cookies, coated with white powder sugar. The Greeks have a special sort of Christmas bread, christopsomo, which is a slightly sweet bread that keeps a lot longer than normal bread.

Christmas Day is celebrated on the 25th December, while Santa Claus or "Agios Vassilis" (St. Basil) as he is known in Greece, visits Greek children on New Year's Eve rather than Christmas Eve. After Christmas Eve follows the 12 days of Christmas, a period which ends on January 6th with the Epiphany. During this period, it is believed “Kallikantzaroi”, a species of goblin-like creatures, appear from the centre of the earth to slip into people’s houses through the chimney. They tease people and eat their food during these 12 days, but being quite unintelligent, they are not actually dangerous. To stop the goblins from coming in through the chimney, especially villagers keep a fire lit in their fireplace for 12 days and nights. It is also common to have a shallow wooden bowl containing a little water and a spring of basil wrapped around a wooden cross. Once a day the mother wets the basil in some holy water and sprinkles water with it in every room of the house, scaring the Kallikantzaroi away.

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