Christmasses Past

My first Christmas in Greece in 1976 was a non-event.  I remember walking down main street Piraeus, the big port city near Athens, on a cold Christmas eve along a dark undecorated street, the only sign of Xmas a decorated tree high up in the window of an apartment building.  I didn't really mind back then.  My mind was not on what Santa would bring but whose hand I was holding.

It made an impression on me for sure because I  remember the occasion vividly.  No carols, no christmas cake, no twinkling lights.  It was years before Piraeus decorated its streets and broadcast piped music for the shoppers.  When my children were very small I wanted them to delight in the magic of Christmas, the anticipation of opening those presents under the tree, leaving whisky and cakes for Santa, reading them 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' the evening before, hanging up the stockings and playing with new toys the next day.

Everything had to be done from scratch.  I made xmas crackers out of those cardboard loo roll tubes, very disappointing.  There was no bang but they did get to wear a homemade paper hat.  I  made ornaments for the tree and house from coloured paper I bought from school supply shops.  I don't remember where the tree came from.  

When the two girls were very young I used to take them into the public parks and visit the ancient ruins in Athens and I would visit the British Council Library.  It was the only way I could get english books to read.  The selection was of old dusty books by even older British travellers and writers.  It didn't matter.  It was in English.

The British Council organised every year a xmas bazaar which back then took place in the British Embassy itself.  I know I found xmas stockings there and I probably found a few xmas sweets and cards.  They had a Father Christmas too though I don't remember my kids sitting on his knee.   The two girls were a bit stand-offish after an early life of isolation with a foreign mother and a father who was in the Navy.  They had been known to swear, in greek, at nice old women who spoke to them in the street so I probably didn't dare suggest that they be sociable with Santa.

It wasn't till the mid 80s that xmas became a commercial event in the city.  Then big shops would open in the main market selling everything we now associate with the season, here and at home.  Piraeus streets were lit up by the lights that London had the previous year.  Maybe they still are.  

Every holiday we went to Poros for a few days.  Not my favourite way to spend a holiday.  Too many greek relatives very close by. We often compromised by staying home for the actual day so I could have traditional dinner with an elderly South African couple I had met. We went to the island for New Year.

Margo and Jimmy lived on a boat in the marina and were excellent with the girls. They helped keep me sane.

  Poros did not start decorating for another 10 years and Xmas was  traditionally Greek.  Small children came around singing the time honoured carol on Xmas Eve and were given a coin and a cake.

The housewives were busy baking melomakarouna (honey biscuits) and kourabiethes (walnut biscuits), dipless (sweet pastry) and we were offered these everytime we took a step into a local house.  There was no thought of saying 'no'.  They wished you the appropriate seasonal greetings and you answered back with the classic reply.  And you scoffed a sticky cake or two.  The men were also offered a glass of whisky and Metaxa brandy was also popular back then. 3* real rough stuff.

Women were offered a sweet liqueur, homemade. Now and again I was offered whisky. Foreign women were known to be a bit outrageous. A Greek woman wouldn't dream of drinking hard liqueur and often didn't even drink wine.

The children did get Christmas presents  but these were supposed to be opened on New Years Day.  They weren't.  They were ripped open there and then.  Horrors.  You couldn't make a child wait that long.  However, the presents were rarely toys.  They were always clothes and shoes, given by the godparents.  Grandparents usually gave the children money which was quickly taken away by the Mama to buy more clothes and shoes.

On Christmas day itself the family gathered to eat together, usually roast pork and potatoes or pork and greens in a lemon sauce. I don't remember turkey being on the menu at all though it was in later years often in the form of an egg and lemon soup. The main event of the day came later.  Christmas day is the fiesta of all those named Christos and Christina.  We had a few in the family and we trapsed from house to house to eat more pork, or lamb, drink  wine, dance a step or two, laugh at slapstick Greek jokes, me trying to be merry. Thank goodness I had small children and an excuse to leave early. The men drank on as was the tradition.

Our family Xmas dinner nowadays is half Greek and half English. And the men drink on . 

I miss carols by candlelight and the magic of warm decorated shops, piped music and a jolly old St Nick.

One year, about ten years ago, we went to Athens just before Christmas and visited a big shopping Mall. I almost cry at the memory. Christmas music wafting through the halls, hustle and bustle of Xmas shopping, decorations, baubles and an atmosphere so very, very different from that of a cold Greek island.

A few times we also went into Athens to the Xmas bazaar now organised by the Athens Church of England. Mince pies, real plum puddings, so many English voices, piles of cheap books, the white elephant stall,  chutneys, jams and cakes, Irish coffee, scones.  Tombola, raffles , a choir singing carols and the Vicar in a kilt.  There was a bazaar held this year but we couldn't go. Maybe next year.

Xmas 2020

Christmas preparations are under way.  Presents and decorations are gathering dust, having been put up 3 weeks ago

This is the flower of Christmas.  A poinsettia with its gorgeous red leaves.  Known as an Alexandrino in greek.  This year I was given one for my birthday, a couple of weeks ago.

I kept it inside but it definitely didn't like the warm nights near the wood fire.  A lot of its leaves dried up and fell off.  Now I've put it outside but we are having a particulary cold wet spell and I'm a bit worried about it .  I may have to put it next to me on my desk where the warmth of the fire hardly reaches, shiver,  and it's near the window.

Every year my daughter and I try to keep them growing after the Christmas holdidays.  My daughter is more successful than I am.

They can grow well in this climate because there is one down the road from our old house which is the size of a tree and a friends mother has one for five years now and it's leaves turn red at Christmas just as they should.  That was another problem.  The leaves slowly turn green.  How do you get the red back again?

Home knitted gnomes meet coca-cola elves under the xmas tree.  The elves were part of a coca-cola campaign many, many years ago.  We got bundles of them because a nephew worked for the company.  

I always hang my birthday cards up with the Xmas cards.  This year there is 1 xmas card and two birthday cards.  Maybe the rest will arrive in February as has happened before, without a pandemic to slow the mail.

However, I did only send out 10 cards so I can't expect many can I!

The cards get fewer and fewer every year.  In fact I'm not sure what I'll do next year.  I haven't seen cards on sale here so I may have to remember to order some online in October.  Fat chance of me remembering that!

I have ready-strung cards from years gone-by so I'll just hang those, next year.

Mince pies cake pudding wine sauce
Mulled wine
Yule log
Brussel sprouts
Pate
Pointsettia
pohutakawa

It Came, It Went

Hristouyenna, Christmas
an annual religious and cultural celebration which takes place on December 25th, unless you're a follower of the old calendar.   They'll be celebrating on January 8th


Christmas Day is a holiday here and so is the day after.  It is also the name day for those named Christos, Christina or variations thereof.  

In days gone by it was simply a day off work.  All the family ate together and then ours would walk up the steps with a box of cakes to celebrate the rest of the day with cousin Christina and later at the house next door with cousin Christos.  Presents were only given by St Nik to our own 'foreign' offspring.  

Nowadays it is a time to eat too much,  to spend money and for families to get together whether they like it or not, usually for the sake of small children, just like the rest of the western world

Our day was 'fraught'.  Small underlying tensions remained 'mostly' underlying but everything else that could go wrong, did.

The weather was warm and dry at 7am says my daughter.  I wouldn't know.  By 9 it was pouring with rain and it rained all day

Half of the presents I ordered are mid-Pacific, still haven't turned up.  Looks like I'll be keeping them for summer name days, when they arrive.

There were various pieces of meat.  The roast pork was delicious and the crackling crisp and fatty

The brussels sprouts were enjoyed by brussel sprout enthusiasts

Half were boiled and half were roasted

There were roast spuds, sweet potato (kumara) and squash

A pair of tarantula slippers and a neon flashing keyboard

The Christopsomo (Christ Bread) was a little tinged but just as fresh baked bread should be.  Most food including the bread was baked in the outside wood fired oven

The chicken was cooked in our electric oven along with a nasty smell of burning plastic.  About half way through cooking I discovered the smell was coming from the plastic handle of a bread knife which had been left inside the oven. It had melted all over the bottom of the stove and had to be cleaned up quickly before the chicken started tasting of burnt plastic as well

Fresh mushrooms gathered locally and kindly given to us by a friend.  Unfortunately they were extremely bitter and went on the compost heap instead

Australian chardonnay helped save the day

And shots of Baileys

The banoffee pie was a disaster.  The base didn't set, the caramel burnt and left a smoky taste and the cream wouldn't whip.  The bananas were perfect.  No one ate any, not even the bananas

St Nik arrived on time and spread some cheer

Amen

Christmas Morning

Christmas Eve was beautiful, sunny and warm.  Christmas Day has dawned very slowly and the light still has not penetrated into the house.  There is a fine drizzle and the temperature has dropped a few degrees.

We'll all be inside today, all day long.  I've cleared off the treadmill, turned it from a coathanger to a mean fighting machine.  The kids will need it today to burn off all that extra energy, rocket energy from the kilos of sugar they are consuming,  Who gives them all that chocolate anyway?  It's Santa's fault, nothing to do with Mrs Santa!  I tried years ago to fob them off with a walnut and a mandarine in their Christmas stockings but they did not make the grade.

Christmas Eve was spent biting fingernails over the number of presents and the eveness of distribution.  Were there enough in the stocking to satisfy demand?  One 'big' present goes under the Christmas tree and several small things go in the stocking.  A pair of flamingo sox, some Christmas hair ties and a handful of chocolates satisfy the girls but what does Santa put in the boys stocking?  He never asks in this house whether they were naughty or nice.   ALL my grandchildren are nice!



All the grandkids stockings are hand knit.  All very 'individual'.  They love them whatever.  One year I only put presents under the tree and there was a riot when they found empty stockings.  That will never, never happen again



The boys this year have in their stockings xmas boxer shorts, a healthy pomegranite drink for one and a bottle of cider for the other.  Well, he's almost 18 and around here 18 year olds have already been drinking half their life, from a glass of wine at the family table to a bacardi breezer at the bars down town...etc  Who really knows what 18 year old boys have been up to, except them and maybe now and again their mother.

They also have a selection of healthy and unhealthy sweets.  The grandchildren are athletes and some very serious about their diet.  A bowl of spinach and a kilo of lentils might be more appreciated by one.  Anyway there is a selection of real sweet gooey chocolate,  sugar-free (but no way calorie free) chocolate, fruit bars , greek sweets made of sesame seeds and honey and chocolate covered rice crackers.  Our kids love rice crackers so these chocolate covered ones should go down very well.

K is making a pastourmadopita.  Ha, get your tongue around that word after a xmas hangover.



In goes the pie - pastourmadopita, a big pie made with cured spiced beef slices, tomato  and cheese

Stop:  that photo is staged!  No pie or pork would go into the oven with a roaring fire.  The fire has to die down and the food is cooked on the embers

The pork and wild pig have been slowly roasting all night long and the meat is falling off the bone.  I think we may be eating before midday.  The 'foreign' side of the family, me and the kids will be eating stuffed chook, brussel sprouts and roast sweet potatoes

Funny really to think that down in NZ and Australia some could be nursing sore heads while we are still drinking our first coffee and preparing for a long day ahead.  NZ is almost half a day ahead of us and Australia 6 hours.

The extended Australian family enjoying their Christmas dinner beside the pool

I will eventually get around to sending you all individual Christmas wishes but in the meantime

Kala Hristouyenna to everyone who reads and comments on my blog.  I really do hope your Christmas day is cheery and bright 

I have sent out no cards this year and not even a Christmas email.  I will be in touch.  I could not be!  

Love to all of you and your families

The Streets are Decked

Poros is in Christmas mode.  All the harbour streets have xmas lights, the houses are lit up with, often wonky, flashing lights and festive trees in their windows.  The same darn wonky lights that annoyed me last year have been put up around the windows of the same house.  I want to get up there on a ladder and push them into place.  They dip and waver and the last bit climbs up the wall on a strange angle, obviously to reach some power point.  FIX THEM damn it.

The main square has this strange snow globe with an empty chair in it.  Will Santa sit there?  

The kids climb in there and throw fake snow at each other.

The fake snow is made up of tiny particles of re-cycled plastic bags.  

There is also a minature train in the middle of the square but it was still being assembled so I didn't take a photo.  The train offers free rides round the square to all the children in the evenings.

A huge blow-up Christmas tree outside the Town Hall

The back alley has a team of Santas climbing up the balcony above the store which sells the Santas

A list of festive activities which of course you can't read because it is in Greek.

A popular singer is coming to give a concert in the square.  There will be a Santa bringing presents and tonight the High School choir gave a concert of carols, greek and otherwise.  My grandchildren were singing

The Crafty shop window in the back alley

  

And first prize goes to the cake shop window.  

Very festively decorated and full of glorious sticky cakes

Xmas Visit to a Friend

Today I visited my dear english friend across the waters, the one that laughs with me when we come head first into a greek stone wall, the friend that laughs at me when I come out with something oddly greek , the friend who speaks english english.   At Christmas and Easter I pass on my  attempts at hot cross buns and mince pies, overcooked jam, chutney or mulled wine. She is always politely pleased

The animal society of Poros is having a Christmas bazaar.  

Someone made Sangria.  6 euros a bottle.  If you keep it more than a couple of days it blows it's top but thank goodness it's still drinkable.  Well, until you get down to the last few inches which we did today.  It was Sangria with real fruit and all the pulp had sunk to the bottom.  Even after straining it the drink was rather cloudy.  Went down just as well!   

J is a dog looker-after.  She fosters strays till they can be re-homed and looks after the health of many of the strays of Poros and Galatas.  This innocent looking fellow is George and just out of the picture is the just as 'guiltess' Taylor.  She left them alone in the house the other day and they 'investigated' the Christmas cards

Not any old Christmas cards, just those that were to be passed on to me.  Judy, I got your card and fortuntately the seeds inside those mangled packets were untouched.  I'll be planting some prized tomatoes and peppers next year.  

Yes, this is a Christmas mince pie.  It doesn't look like one?  Well, it tastes like one anyway.  I had some puff pastry in the fridge and had taken last years left-over mince meat out of the freezer and threw these together for a quick taste of foreign Christmasses.  The perfect accompaniment to cork-blowing Sangria

The view from J's house on Galatas, looking across to Poros.  Going across the waters is a big trip for me.  It feels like unexplored territory.  Silly really but it takes an effort for me to get on the car ferry and visit the friends and relatives we have five minutes across the strait. 

Leno 

This is Leno, another one of the foster dogs.  J has been looking after him for a while now.  He's a gentle soul but rather on the large side.  She calls him the polar bear.

Here you can see them both at the top of her yard.

If you would like to adopt a gentle giant then just leave me a comment.  The last foster dog, Lola, is now living in Canada.

The day was freezing with a cold wind blowing off the mountains above.  I wouldn't be surprised if the peaks had a smattering of snow by tomorrow morning.  I enjoyed my voyage across the sea and the putt-putt-putting of my quad bike as I drove along Galatas harbour.  I must make an effort and do it more often.  Usually when I board the car ferry it is in a car with my appointed chauffeur and we whizz off down the coast for some pressing appointment.