Christmas in Greece: Festivities, Feasts, Fires, and Fears

Leading up to Christmas in Greece, a mild season this year in Crete and Athens, poinsettia trees and cyclamen flowers bloom, community groups organize charity bazaars, schoolchildren stage performances during which parents talk, and schools offer parties featuring cheese pies and sweets, Santa and stories, crafts and (in our case) Cretan dances and Zumba. Christmas carnivals spring up in various city squares, parks, and stadiums, with colorful rides, giant bubbles, and seasonal activities for children, as well as opportunities for commerce by immigrants, Roma, and Greeks. Greeks gather at the homes of friends and family for reunions, reminiscences, gifts for the kids, food, and drink--and to share their pessimism about the future of Greece, complaining about high taxes and expenses, with salaries back at 2006 levels for those who still have jobs, and ever lower pensions. I have spoken with only one person who believes the current centrist coalition government is doing the right thing, and only one other person who believes the leftist SYRIZA (the main opposition party) can improve things. And those are the leading political parties in Greece, nearly tied in the polls--but with not even a quarter of respondents supporting either one.

 

Piraeus, or Pireas (the port city that runs into Athens), is really not where I wanted to spend this most home- and family-centered holiday (in my own American experience), partly because it's not a place where I can satisfy my very particular sentimental and aesthetic preferences for small colorful lights on large houseplants and live Christmas trees, plus the dozens of red and white candles my mother used to light all over our spacious living room, the menorah candles for Hanukkah, a fire in the fireplace (and no concern for smog), hot chocolate and Monopoly after ice skating and sledding or frisbee football, my mother's cooking and baking and our Christmas cookie decorating sessions: my all-American, intercultural, nostalgic memories, not even completely marred by my parents' divorce, with extended family so far-flung across our large continent that we adopted dear friends as family to share holidays with us. Of course, this first Christmas and New Year’s after my mother died were bound to be difficult. I miss her, as well as my father, and I haven’t yet gotten used to her absence.

But here we are with my mother in law (one of the most thoughtful, accommodating, unselfish people I know) in Piraeus for the typically long school vacation: more than two weeks this year, to encompass everything from Christmas Eve through New Year's and then the celebration of the lights (Epiphany) and Agios Ioannis (Saint John's) day. And it was busy enough here with the shopping, children's gifts, kitchen cleanup, visiting with Greek family, and cooking (including my annual turkey soup with leftovers from the bird Greeks eat only at Christmas and New Year's, along with goat and pork) that I kept my nostalgic desires in check and just accepted the day for what it was, here and now, festive and celebratory in its own family- and food-centered Greek way.

While the White Mountains of Crete have been living up to their name, well covered with snow for weeks now, here in Piraeus on my Christmas morning walk it felt like fall, with mild temperatures and many trees still full of more yellow leaves than we tend to see in our part of Crete, with some crumbling underfoot as they used to back in Pennsylvania, except that here they mix with citrus trees in front of the few dilapidated and renovated neoclassical houses that remain, dwarfed between five to seven-story apartment blocks. A few boats decorated with lights add an interesting twist to the ubiquitous Christmas trees and scattering of Santas (and the large boat in Athens's central Syntagma Square provides an especially noteworthy return to Greek tradition this year after last year's bizarre, needlessly expensive scaffolding-light-and-noise monstrosity).

Once our company joined us, I witnessed an interesting Christmas dinner discussion of the accuracy of goat bone readers (like fortune tellers, or the readers of eggs and interpreters of coffee grounds left in a cup). A father claimed that the first initial of his then-future wife's name, the birth of their two sons, and the sons' first initials had all been correctly foretold by a Romanian woman, but his wife disagreed, and his son objected that such beliefs were un-Christian. A grandmother explained that the Orthodox Church allows such fortune telling on Saint George's day in April, and her son whispered to me that this was part of the church's attempts to reconcile the pagan and Christian beliefs of Greeks in early Christian times. I suppose I could have heard a similar conversation (which reminds me of Zora Neale Hurston) in some parts of the U. S., but I haven't been in the right place for it so far.

Young people in Greece sing their Christmas carols, or Calenda, in return for money, often accompanying themselves with triangles, on Christmas Eve morning and again on New Year's Eve morning and January 5, the day before Epiphany, which is known here as Fota, the festival of light and day for blessing the waters and boats (when a priest throws a cross into the freezing sea, and brave youths race to retrieve it). Sometimes we see wandering bands or accordionists playing carols or other music in the streets these days. What I'd never seen before was a little band of youths with two trombones, a clarinet, a trumpet, and a drum

marching through a small neighborhood "super"market as they played (and how they could do that, with the crowds in that small space, I don't know; I find it difficult to just make my way through some of the aisles to shop there when it's busy!). I hadn't ever seen (or heard) the Calenda played with plastic tubes of varying lengths, either, as groups of visitors did at the Eugenides Foundation's Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition Hall next to its digital planetarium last week. I played my part best in the carol with the same tune as "Jingle Bells," where I actually knew the rhythm. Then we watched a wonderful film about expeditions to Everest, which was the highlight of our visit, since some of the exhibits didn't work correctly, although others were fascinating. Our favorite was the air percussion room, where it sounded like we were playing drums, cymbals, and bells when we hit the air.

Actually, there was a great deal more energy, as well as far more people, when the Technical University of Crete hosted a science fair for elementary school students on December 7, with chemistry demonstrations using ordinary household materials such as baking soda, vinegar, eggs, water, oil, and dyes; small robotic dogs and soccer players that ran (awkwardly) and attempted goals (without any remote control); cell phones to tell when plants must be watered; illustrations and elementary discussions of mathematical models and fractals; computer-generated shadow puppetry; elementary students' exhibits of the water cycle and a volcano that erupted; and more demonstrations than anyone could visit in a few hours. What was most encouraging was that both children and parents were excited and impressed by the science, and with an estimated 3,000 visitors, it felt like the university was THE place to be on that Saturday afternoon! My son even delayed leaving for a birthday party in order to watch more of the chemistry demonstrations. I suppose that event was more impressive than the Athens museum both due to the enthusiastic, energetic efforts of hundreds of students and professors, and because Chania residents unaccustomed to access to a science museum really appreciated seeing something extraordinary.

More recently, we delayed our venture into central Athens to see what Christmas carnivals and activities might impress our children and to check out this year's lovely traditional decorations in Syntagma Square, because of concern about the severe smog created by the fireplaces and wood stoves used to heat homes. This is the result of heating oil prices that are drastically higher than a few years ago (and much higher than in New York and London), thanks to the government’s efforts to combat smuggling and to raise more of the money that the Troika demands, while salaries are so much lower than they used to be, and many families’ electricity has been cut off because they couldn’t pay their bills. There has been such a serious problem with air quality in Athens and some other Greek cities that children and elderly people were advised to stay indoors some days, and people were asked to stop using fireplaces. Since one teenager died and another couple's house burned down during recent attempts to heat homes with fires, more assistance has been offered to the most impoverished so they can afford to heat their homes more safely, but I don't know if the aid will reach enough people in time to prevent more tragedies. And southern Greece isn’t even very cold yet. We are fortunate; we are still able to pay our bills, even though D’s salary and benefits have been cut several times. I was not even bothered by the air quality in the city; nor did I notice a smell of smoke outside. Even so, each time I came in after going out at night, I was surprised to find that my hair smelled like a wood fire.

The government and its supporters claim that the economy is improving--but so they've been saying for some time, and many ordinary Greeks have yet to see evidence of this. Granted, Greece will have a primary surplus this year, and investors in government bonds will make a great deal of money, but this occurs at the expense of people who lack heat, electricity, homes, sufficient warm clothing and shoes, necessary health care, and/or adequate nutritious food, since the government and the Troika have acted less to promote ordinary people's well-being than to help banks, bonds, and the national economic numbers that are most important to the upper classes. It's true that some Greeks have enough money to rent little cars for small children or pedal-powered cars for families next to the extensive Paleo Faliro playgrounds and promenade by the sea, while others can afford the entry fees required for children's holiday activities that were free last year, when the city of Athens spent far more on Christmas, or pay for carnival rides. New exercise equipment for adults in Paleo Faliro, a new daycare center and toddlers' playground in Neo Faliro, and still

impressive metro stations such as the one in Kerameikos with its sculpted forest also imply a measure of prosperity. 

However, many small businesses are struggling to stay open, or closing, leaving many empty spaces for rent or destroyed by weather and vandalism. Tens of thousands of university students began their fall semester only in mid December due to staff strikes, and prisons suffer from such excessively overcrowded, unhygienic, barbaric conditions that they sound like they resemble the dungeons of the Dark Ages (Greek prison system collapsing – labeled 'inhuman'). Doctors serving Greek public servants, including teachers and professors,

have been striking for months, except for emergency treatment, leaving basic and preventive care unprovided for many who cannot afford to pay private doctors. The article about the "Council of Europe report: 10austerity imposed human rights abuses in Greece" provides a concise overview of the ways hastily applied, inadequately considered austerity measures threaten the health and well-being of Greeks and other Europeans with their negative effects on pensions, health care, workers' rights,

unemployment rates, and freedom of expression, rather than “Safeguarding human rights in times of economic crises” (as the report is titled). The article suggests that Greek leaders' plans to satisfy the Troika's demands to save money often end up conflicting with the Treaty on European Union and the European Social Charter. On subways and sidewalks, wandering Roma children with accordions  and collection cups compete with Greek beggars' stories of hardship, prompting some handouts, some silence, and one well-dressed middle-aged woman’s notation of an unemployed father's address, with the comment that she wanted to send him something.

On the other hand, some free-spirited Greek youths demonstrated their exuberance with back flips and twists into the Paleo Faliro sand the other day. And the impressive wall painting of two blue hands cupped below a flaming euro coin (pictured in my October 22, 2012 blog) outside the Theatro kato ap' tin Gefira (Theater Under the Bridge) near the Olympiakos soccer stadium in Neo Faliro has been replaced by a possibly more hopeful image of a lit candle. I don't know if that refers to the Christmas holiday, or to increased hope for the Greek economy and the country as a whole. In any case, we shall see whether the midnight firecrackers and phone calls of New Year’s Eve, the Vasilopita or New Year’s cake, with one piece set aside for strangers, and the family gatherings over holiday dinners foreshadow a more joyful, caring, generous and hopeful year for Greece in 2014. We finally visited the nearby Archaeological Museum of Piraeus for the first time yesterday and were impressed with its small but often impressive collection before beginning a long seaside walk past the boats and harbors of Piraeus, so that was a good start for us. May it be a happier new year for those who struggled in 2013.

The Calm before the Storm, Part 1: August in Athens

I am just now looking back to August and September, because life intervened to steal my writing time, as it has for mothers across the continents and centuries. In my case, the more there is to write about, the less time there is to write.

Back to August 16, when we were lucky enough to travel from Chania to Pireas on a much newer ANEK ferry boat than usual: the Elyros, rather than another that appears to be decades old. So we spent part of our seven hour journey admiring impressively curving stairways and gleaming railings, eating our lunch in a cafeteria with a glittering sea view and expansive mirrors. That was the day after the holiday celebrating the Assumption of the Virgin—the major holiday of midsummer, the most important of several days honoring the Virgin Mary (Maria or the Panayota), and name day for many of the Greeks named “Maria,” “Panayota,” or “Panayotis.” We were doing things backwards, leaving a Greek island to vacation in Athens just as most Athenians with adequate means left Athens to vacation on the islands. While this exposed us to the scorching heat of an Athenian summer, it also left us with more parking spaces than we’d find at any other time of the year and, in some places and times, an astonishing sense of solitude and quiet in a city that’s now in turmoil. Whether businesses were closed for an August vacation, or they had gone bankrupt due to the economic crisis, I sometimes felt like I was walking through a ghost town.

The day after our arrival, we gave in to our kids’ echoing appeals and took them to their favorite place: the three-block-long series of playgrounds near the Parko Flisvo tram stop in Paleo Faliro. When I first saw those colorful climbing, running, sliding, hiding castle- and boat-like creations, I was amazed by their scale and variety. My childhood self retrospectively envied my children—how I would have delighted in such playgrounds! Unfortunately, the municipality partly ruined the effect by inserting in the middle of an open space a number of completely unnecessary electric kiddy rides for which we must pay a euro or two if we decide to appease the desires they create. I have complained to the attendant about this devious plot to extract money from parents and distract children from healthy exercise. But we still arrange to meet friends with children at this spot where the kids are delighted to spend time—even if actually keeping track of them can be challenging enough to make conversation difficult. This August was the first time we unexpectedly chanced upon friends there—one of my oldest Greek friends, whom I’d met in 1991, with her husband and young son.

One evening at a restaurant, four couples, plus our own two kids, savored the best meat I’d eaten in a decade—steak from Kansas, where my grandfather once raised beef cattle! While another mother kindly distracted my daughter, I attempted a mental juggling act that caused me great confusion: I struggled to resurrect my long-lost Spanish, conversing with a Spanish woman who’s learning Greek but—as I then mistakenly believed--didn’t know English. Since my Spanish seldom came to mind, I tried Greek and then asked for the Spanish translation. I’d known for years that my limited Greek had usurped the space in my brain that Spanish once occupied. Never a very successful foreign language scholar, I felt my mind tied in knots by multilingual gymnastics conducive to much worse than mixed metaphors. However, my new Spanish friend and I enjoyed laughing over our efforts and taught my young son a few Spanish words. Meanwhile, others in our group—economists, an engineer, a scientist, all with graduate degrees—debated the political situation in Greece. They argued about whether Greece will still leave the euro, whether it might end up with two currencies, whether the euro zone will disintegrate, whether a new political party or only a martyr could save Greece, what could make most Greek people accept necessary changes to the current entitlement mentality and society. I don’t think this was so much about whether to help needy people, but more about so many Greek people believing they are entitled to a great deal, without necessarily contributing to society. This brings to mind a typical situation at a public office recently: while a long line of citizens waited in vain for assistance, two employees engaged in casual conversation.

Given the economic situation, we needed to buy as many as possible of our kids’ shoes and clothes for the coming school year in the Athens area; Chania’s prices are simply insane to anyone who hasn’t lived there all her life (49 euros for kids’ canvas sneakers that don’t last half a year, for example; 70 and up for better kids’ shoes). In Pireas, though, within a ten minute walk of D’s mom’s house, there’s a sort of outlet mall with many durable brands at very low prices. After many hours of careful, tedious, tiring shopping, mostly at Orchestra for the kids, I emerged triumphant with 32 items for 189 euros. We managed to buy the kids some good fall/winter leather shoes for 25 euros each at the nearby Crocodilino, and found some 20 and 30 euro partly leather Puma sneakers at the outlets. As long as one doesn’t mind sale items from last year’s stock—which is all the same to me, since I prefer the comfortable, durable, economical, and practical to the fashionable—those are the places to shop. And indeed these very affordable stores are the ones that thrive now, while others are nearly deserted, and many businesses have closed.

I can’t decide whether there were more beggars or wandering immigrant salespeople in the Athens area this time, or not. For years, any time we’ve sat at a café in a tourist area, we have been beseeched by Roma children with flowers or instruments and outstretched hands, strong mothers carrying heavy babies, and immigrants selling cheap watches, CDs, or toys, one after another, in a procession of appeals and sales pitches. Most urban train rides continue to feature musicians, individuals selling tissue packs, or people who are disabled and/or unemployed, or have sick family members, telling their stories and appealing for help, moving from one car to another at the stations. Many display ID cards and some sort of medical documentation. In August, one middle aged man tried to convince train passengers that he deserved assistance because he was an unemployed Greek, rather than a foreigner. Two dark-skinned teenage accordionists surprised me with their unusually beautiful duet. Near Thisseio metro station, an unaccompanied five or six year old musician wore an oversized cowboy hat. And in the resort town of Xylocastro, an energetic foursome entertained taverna patrons with a miniature circus of contortion, music, dance, clowning, and juggling with fiery torches. That I'd never seen before. Nor had I seen dark-skinned immigrants selling sunglasses and hats on beaches in the Athens area and beyond, as I did this year.

There probably are more people begging for help, or desperately trying to sell whatever they can, and there are certainly more police on the streets and sidewalks, more security personnel in bullet-proof vests around stores and the metro, and more security scanners in stores. D’s mom lives close to the neighborhood police officers’ favorite corner, not far from one of the many new pawn shops that have sprung up in the Athens area. I was surprised to see its window proclaim that it deals in not only gold, but also cars and real estate. They’re ready for any level of Greeks’ desperation. At the other end of Athens, on a trip to the Best Wildlife Photography of the Year exhibit, which inspired me to take better, more careful photos—with a better, more expensive camera than I’m likely to have in the foreseeable future--I managed one or two quick shots of the cool, impressively massive Mall of Athens before a security guard informed me that I must turn off my camera. I’d never heard of photos being prohibited in malls, but apparently that’s another security measure meant to stop thieves from finding ways to scale four or five story walls unseen by security personnel, so they can enter through skylights James Bond style to steal some expensive shoes or handbags…. 

 Graffiti in Athens and Pireas has become more colorful and pointed than I remember, with the exterior of some trains almost completely covered in rainbows of designs and nearly illegible lettering. The interiors feature such hastily scribbled comments (in Greek) as “Fascists we don’t wait for you we look for you,” an anarchist’s call for confrontation with the neo-Nazi extremists who have gained in popularity during the economic crisis. Another message urges, “F-ing idiot Greek wake up, stop the idiocy.” On the other hand, outside the Olympiacos soccer stadium in Neo Faliro, where we attended a free practice session with the kids, one wall advertised “Olympiacos fanatics,” while a block away “Olympiacos fans against fanatics” responded. The best painting under a highway underpass near the soccer stadium—a site surrounding the Theater Under the Bridge which is always filled with street art rather than quickly spray-painted slogans—is the most elegantly significant graffiti I’ve seen this year: two blue and white hands nearly cupped, raised up to catch a falling, flaming euro coin—or have they just released the coin and thrown it up, ablaze?

As part of my escape from the Eurozone crisis, I enjoyed rambling around the semi-familiar narrow streets of Plaka and Monastiraki, whose main thoroughfares seemed full enough of tourists, past the handsome neoclassical buildings and houses juxtaposed with tourist shops. I appreciate striking glimpses of the Acropolis and other pillars, towers, arches and walls, which are particularly imposing in their dramatic illumination at night. Since we’d completely upset our kids’ (and our own) sleep schedule by hiding from the heat wave until after 6:00 p.m. and then returning home around midnight (after which we’d sleep through most of the morning), we ended up visiting the magnificent Acropolis Museum during its extended hours on a Friday evening. We’d been there before by day, when the kids were too young to allow us more than a quick survey of the museum’s amazing architecture, its fascinating views of ongoing archeological digs under the floors, outside and in, its extensive collection of ancient marble and bronze sculpture, its re-creation of the top of the Parthenon, and its awe-inspiring views of the Acropolis. This time, I was even more entranced by the views and reflections of night. On the top floor, the radiant white of the marble that Lord Elgin did not take to England—the sculptures of men and women, goddesses and gods, horses and symbols--compete for attention with the lit-up Parthenon that once housed them, which we view through windows that reflect back the sculpture as if to reunite monument and adornments separated by people and time. 

A short film in English and Greek (alternately, every 12 or 13 minutes) explains the history of the Acropolis, with such a moving appeal for the return of the surviving Parthenon sculptures that our young son expressed outrage at the destruction of some and removal of others—the son who’d been drawn into the museum by the film in the lobby that gave him things to look for in the collection and helped divert him when he began to get bored. (Look, here’s an owl! There’s a horse! Oh, a calf! And some arrows!) Our daughter, who’d started studying Greek mythology and ancient history in school last year (they really do begin at the beginning in third grade history here!), was so interested that she wanted to look at every item in the museum, but we couldn’t manage that either before closing time or before our younger son ran out of patience. I thought we did well to last an hour and a quarter before emerging to admire the museum’s architecture in front of the Acropolis, with both dazzlingly illuminated in the total darkness. If people visit one museum in Greece, the Acropolis Museum should be the one. If Greeks can build a museum like this, perhaps they can make their way out of this crisis to build a better society. Like two of the promising young boys in my neighborhood, the Acropolis Museum gives me hope for Greece.

D and I enjoyed another breathtaking view of the Acropolis one night when we left the kids (at last!) with their grandmother and aunt to join some old Princeton friends at a penthouse apartment in Kolonaki featuring balconies with views of much of Athens. On one side, the church of St. Dionisis; on another, Mt. Lykavittos; across from that, the Acropolis; below and around it all, the city lights. There we discussed the future of Greece (with some former advisors to two Greek prime ministers unassumingly present among friends). The conclusion of these well to do intellectuals seems to be that the current course of austerity and reform intended to keep Greece in the euro zone is the best of the evils—or at least they can offer no better alternative. However, some admit that more attention needs to be paid to fairness to those in need, vs. the wealthy who can better afford—and, literally, survive—“belt tightening” which can mean life or death for the impoverished and depressed rather than merely an end to selected luxuries. Everyone here knows that the suicide rate in Greece has risen dramatically in recent years, as people who once lived decent lives are reduced to scrounging through garbage bins for food, hoping to find space in homeless shelters instead of sleeping on the streets, while others can’t afford train or bus fare for transport to doctors’ appointments, and may not be able to afford or find the medications they need.

 

We, on the other hand, are fortunate enough to have friends who invite us to visit them in lovely places, and so far we can still afford to get to some of them. So we managed to even escape from our escape by driving to Xylocastro, one of the beach resort towns within one or two hours’ drive of Athens. While I wouldn’t say the pebbly beach or deep blue waters rival those of Crete, the pine forest and view of Mt. Parnassus across the Corinthian Gulf provided a refreshing site for our more or less relaxed visit—more or less depending on how cooperative our kids were, and especially how much the other two couples’ two one year olds were crying, fussing, or otherwise demanding attention. So we lounged on seaside sunbeds and swam, trying to keep the kids in the shade of the palm frond umbrellas, or walked through the long leaf pine forest next to the beach to rock one of the babies to sleep in his stroller (bringing back vivid memories of such times with my kids). Returning to Athens in the dark, we drove past the spectacular lights and fire-shooting smokestacks of the Elefsina oil refineries by full moonlight for a much more intriguing view than the exhaust we see and smell there by day. Then, to my astonishment, the flashing lights of a police car slowed traffic ahead of the first night-time road construction site I’d ever seen in Greece—at 11:00 p.m. in August, month of vacations, no less (although D is sure the workers were not actually Greek, but immigrants). We continued past the Vromiko (meaning “Dirty”) café, followed by the “Godfather of the Dirty One’s” café, toward the illuminated Mt. Lykavittos. But our most impressive landmark was the Straits of Corinth, where we stopped to show the kids the deep canal illuminated by both electricity and the full moon.

Coming soon: The Calm before the Storm, Part 2:  Retreat from Reality (Early September in Southern Crete).  Then back to real life.