“The old Christmas customs and traditions show that people practiced love, humility and “tasted” the whole world,” says priest Ilias Makos, who we met in his parish, in the village of Kestrini, Thesprotia, and he told us the Christmas stories of his place.

The Christmas celebrations in Thesprotia, in the old years, were not just entertainment for the world. People knew better the born Christ, loved him, experienced his teaching, carried him in their hearts.

The goblins of the Twelve Days

Particularly widespread in Thesprotia are the beliefs about goblins, who, according to tradition, appear on Christmas Eve and leave the Epiphanies with the Holy Communion.

Goblins, according to mythology, appear at the holidays. They symbolize darkness and live all year in the bowels of the earth, trying to cut down the tree that weighs down the earth. When they are very close to succeeding, on Christmas Eve they ascend to earth creating problems for people.

People tried to neutralize them in various ways and mainly with fire, which burned continuously in the hearth throughout the Twelve Days. With its ashes, they sprinkled the house on the morning of Epiphany and on the day of the feast with holy water, and thus the demons fled.

The carols of the Holy Days

The carols of Christmas, but also of New Year’s and Epiphany, are auspicious and praise songs for the family and the home and at the same time, the set narrative of the event of the day. The children used to keep a basket for the “tissues”. The fillets were mainly sweets, such as diples, xerotigana, loukumades, but also nuts, kourabiedes or honey macarons. Among the most common tips were “rollers”, small rolls of wheat or barley.

The payment of the calandists was neither charity nor begging, but an executive act. They got their name from the Latin word calenda, which was formed from the Greek verb call. Children, in groups, roamed and roam the houses, the streets, the shops. Today the reward for hymns and wishes is mainly monetary and various treats.

The slaughter of pigs or “pork carcasses”

On the eve or eve of Christmas, every family has the “pig carcasses”, the slaughter of pigs, whose thick meat and fat, was the appropriate food for the winter.

The slaughter was a real rite of passage, reminiscent of ancient sacrifices. With a censer, they incensed the carcass and put an onion in its mouth. The children were looking forward to this event. They took the animal’s urethra and made it into a ball. It was first beaten on a stone to remove the grease. Then they inflated it and tied it tightly. A real leather ball!

The Christmas bread of the family

“Christ bread”, a roll richly decorated with all sorts of embroideries or “plumidia”, was dedicated by the family to Christ and with the expectation that He will make their wishes come true.

The “bread of Christ” was made on Christmas Eve by the housewife with special reverence and with special yeast, from dry basil. Necessary above, engraved cross. “Christopsoma” were prepared like bread, except that they were decorated with various ornaments according to the taste of the housewife. In some villages of Thesprotia, the “Christopsoma”, were made embroidered with beautiful shapes, which were made on the dough with various glasses, small or large or mugs made of acorns, which symbolized the abundance, which they wanted to have in the production of animals and of the harvest of their house. Some used to put an unpainted egg in the middle of the Christmas bread, as a symbol of fertility.

On the day of Christ’s birth, and since everyone went to church, no one neglected to go to the Temple, because they thought that without making their cross in the church and listening to the hymns, they would not feel the true meaning of Christmas, they participated in the Christmas table.

Initially, the householder would take the “christmas bread”, cross it, cut it and distribute it to his whole family and to any friends or neighbors who were at home. Everyone wished “happy birthday and next year”. There are traditions surrounding Christbread. Some see here a symbolism of the Divine communion. As Christ gave the bread of life to all his human family…

Others refer to the unity of the Church and the peoples, with the symbolic model of the union of the grains of wheat in a loaf of bread. The peoples will one day be united with one shepherd, Christ.

Pancakes on the plate

“The Christmas pancakes, which are made today, have nothing to do with the taste of the pancakes, which were baked on the griddle,” say the elders.

On the blackboard, a heavy straight stone slab, which was heated before use, the grandmother of the house usually baked the pancakes with porridge made of flour, water and salt.

The children eagerly awaited the pancakes, to eat them warm, tender, dipped in sugar, honey, petimezi, whatever their house had. In all the houses, in the villages of Thesprotia, on Christmas Eve they would prepare the pancakes.

The first pancake, large and round with a cross in the middle, was Christ’s, the second similar to the house. The baked pancakes were placed in buns, round baking pans and in basins. The quantity of dough, which would become pancakes, was sufficient and always proportional to the population of the family. The fire for the pancakes had to be strong and last. That’s why the father was tearing up the thick logs. It was the best fuel for the occasion.

During Christmas Lent in the villages, most of the children went hunting. In the evenings, when the dusk fell well and the cold began to bite, they took the “flashlight” with new “plates” and went back to the ruins and the caves near the village.

Their target is the wagtails, the little birds that used to perch there. They dazzled them with the flashlight and caught them. If they were too high, they hit them with rubber bands and slingshots. The mother or an older sister, after much nagging, would clean and pickle them. They put them in clay or glass jars, to be eaten at Christmas. Many children collected twenty or more birds and boasted about their … hunting skills and their harvest.

The tap and the silent water

“Speechless water” is another custom that was encountered in Thesprotia. On Christmas morning, before dawn, the women would go to the tap and get water, saying: “As the water runs in my tap, so may my harvest run.”

The “unspeakable water”, as they called it, got its name because it was forbidden to talk to anyone along the way. Everyone in the house drank from this water for good. The woman took with her various foods to “feed the tap”, as they said. In fact they did it, so that no poor villager could enjoy the Christmas food.

Epiphany during the German occupation in Igoumenitsa

The priest Ilias Makos tells APE-MPE about the forbidden Epiphany of the German occupation, a real story, which is remembered by the elderly in Igoumenitsa and which is preserved from generation to generation.

“German soldiers in 1943 had surrounded the holy Church of Igoumenitsa on the eve of the Epiphany, so that no one, not even the priest, would dare to come for the celebration of the Lights. At that time, the Temple was a small building, with the cemetery in the courtyard.

The residents, who were eagerly waiting for Epiphany, were frightened and barricaded themselves in their houses.

However, they wanted from the holy water to get strength, to endure the hardships and to feel that the Lord’s Baptism in the Jordan River will mean their own rebaptism and rebirth in the waters of freedom.

They based their present and future on Christ and His Truth.

The ban on the celebration of the Lights came as a reprisal after a sabotage against the conquerors, which, as it turned out later, was the work of the Chamids.

The priest with patriotic greatness, made the decision. At midnight he gathered a few believers in a house, put water in a pot and performed the great consecration while a candle was burning.

Immediately afterwards, defying any enemy patrol to get word of him, he descended, like a shadow, into the sea and submerged the cross, humming:

“In the Jordan of your Baptism, Lord…”

In the morning, from person to person, the consecration was distributed in the few, compared to now, houses of Igoumenitsa, while the occupying forces were left with the impression that they prevented the celebration”.