Christmas In Athens, An Ancient Greek Remembers

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

by Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—12/19/11—Crises bring up memories of other crises, and this country has had more than its share in the past hundred years: world wars, Balkan wars, a civil war, dictatorships, and financial upheavals. But there have also been times of relative calm and prosperity, so let’s look back to the kinder, gentler Athens of the 1930s for a dose of Christmas cheer.

These are the reminiscences of my husband Harilaos, known to some of you as “Joy of the People,” a rough translation of his Greek name. As a very youthful octogenarian, he does not live in the past but I make him tell his stories over and over.

Christmas Preparations

Harilaos: Before the war—I mean World War Two—schools operated on a fixed schedule quite different from today’s. They began the year on October 1^st and ended on the 25^th of June. There were no strikes, no sit-ins, no holidays, and we didn’t even get Saturdays off. The Christmas vacation did not start until noon on December 24^th, and we were sent away with homework so that we would not become lazy. When school opened again on January 7^th, we would have to present our notebooks. We also had to read a book by a modern Greek author and write down our thoughts on his plot and style.

My habit was to do the whole 15 days’ work as soon as I got home so I’d have the rest of the holiday free for seeing friends, going to the movies, and a few parties. I’d shut myself up in my room on Christmas Eve and try to do all the work in one day; two at the most.

But I never reckoned on the head of the household. Who happened to be my father. His name was Christos. Christmas was his ‘name day’ [the day devoted to his patron saint] and he took that event very seriously. [In Greece name days were major social events, much more important than birthdays. People would open up their houses and prepare banquets for ALL their friends. Until the past few decades, New Year’s was the day for exchanging presents, brought by Ai Vassilis (St. Basil, not Santa Claus or St. Nick)].

So, just as I was getting settled, my father would pull me out of my chair to take me Christmas shopping. Not for presents, but for food. Because the next day the house would be full from morning to evening with dozens of friends, relatives, and acquaintances come to wish him “Chronia Polla”—the standard Greek greeting of “Many Years,” used on any and all special occasions. That naturally meant mezedes [nibbles], oceans of wine, and kitchen preparations. The evening was reserved for a big sit-down dinner for his business colleagues.

Wine in our house was a sacred ritual. In the basement there were three or four—I can’t remember exactly how many—enormous barrels which, every September, were filled with grape must brought from the Mesogeia (where the new Athens airport now reigns); first by horse-drawn cart and, by 1935, in an open truck. From then on, my brother Alekos was in charge. He was studying chemistry at Athens University and it was his responsibility to make sure the wine was good. I remember his agony every October 26^th, St. Demetrios’s Day when, traditionally, the spigot was inserted and the wine tasted for quality.

The beginning was always dubious; the first weeks fraught with anxiety because the wine always appeared a bit cloudy. By Christmas, though, things had improved and the crystal-clear wine was invariably pronounced the best ever.

Here again, my father had another peculiarity. The wine always had to be served one pitcher or bottle at a time. He maintained it would spoil, even though he and his friends would empty the containers almost as fast as they were served. How the wine could have spoiled in half an hour I never discovered. But I was the one dispatched to the cellar to fill the bottle and, when that was finished, to go fill another. And so forth . . . .

But back to the Christmas Eve shopping expedition. Our first stop was the so-called German baker’s on Voulis Street, for bread and rolls. After loading me up with a cloth bagful—plastic hadn’t been invented, yet—my father and I walked over to the Central Market on Athinas Street for vegetables, fruit, and meat.

Here, things became problematic because the amounts were so large. But there was a solution, a porter—in the absence of delivery vans—who would carry everything back to the house. These men wore big wicker baskets on their backs, attached by thick straps.

My father would lead the way, choosing okades—the oka was a Turkish measure a bit larger than the kilo—of vegetables and salad greens, tangerines, oranges, apples, and pears for the porter’s basket. To them, he would add a whole lamb, an enormous turkey, and a piglet. I would bring up the rear with my bag of breads. And when the shopping was finished, the procession would walk the few blocks home.

My father gave the porter an extra tip and, if I remember well, settled him in the kitchen for a quick meze and a glass or two of wine in honor of the occasion.

This was the start of a three-day celebration. On Christmas Eve, we usually sat down to a vast sinagrida (an excellent fish of the bream family) from Salamis. Christmas lunch was a family affair, with my grandmother, parents, my oldest brother and his wife, Alekos, and me. At the same time, all morning, dozens of friends and relatives had dropped in to wish my father “Chronia Polla” and they’d be greeted with bowls of red caviar, thick slices of avgotaraho, endless platters of more ordinary mezedes, such as tiny wrapped vine leaves, keftedes, bite-sized spinach pies . . .  and endless bottles of wine.

After lunch, the older family members retired for a nap and to recover and I, who was too young to drink, went off to the movies with friends. In those days, there were eight cinemas to choose from; only one was off limits because of its shady reputation.

Along with all the special festivities at home, there was another invisible group backstage. Some of these kept the show going—the cook and the maid—plus the cook’s husband, who lived with us. Then there was a trio of poor women, who just happened to pass by every day around lunch time. They naturally were fed as a matter of course. Added to them were a dispossessed woman from Constantinople who supposedly taught me English, and a charming, impoverished aristocrat from Marseille, who taught me French. In other words, six extra plates on the table were routine.

It was a sign of the times that all of us considered this practice absolutely normal and we viewed it as our unquestionable duty to help less fortunate individuals to survive. We were something like a Municipal Soup Kitchen during the holidays. The difference was that, in our case, it lasted all year long. Little did we suspect that in just a few years we would ourselves be sitting round the table with a meager portion of greens and 30 drams (one slice) of cornbread to nibble on.

Christmas night, the curtain went up again, this time for my father’s business associates. They used to come for the festive table which, after dinner, was cleared for a game of baccarat. This would go on until 2 or 3 in the morning, and most often it was my father who emerged the loser.

These unrepeatable Christmases of my youth were brought to an end by the War and the Occupation. After Liberation in 1944, our former customs slowly began to revive, but they never regained the spirit or lavishness of the old days. Christmas remained a warm family gathering around the table as gradually all of us married and had children . . . to the point that in the 50s, when my father cut the New Year’s cake [which, like the British Christmas pudding, traditionally has a coin for good luck embedded in it], he had to cut 15 slices instead of the former seven. This was the high point of the meal as we waited to see who would get the coin. Everyone accused my mother of deliberately manipulating the cake to make sure a child won it.

That, too, was a time of pure enjoyment and happiness, though of a different sort.

Recipe

Greek New Year’s Cake/Vassilopita

This version of the classic New Year’s cake becomes deliciously rich with the addition of ground almonds and brandy. Before you can dig in, you must observe the following ritual: the head of the household makes the sign of the cross over the cake three times with the knife; then he cuts it in four before slicing it. The first slice goes to the Christ Child, the second to St. Basil (“Ai Vasili”), the third to the poor, the next for any absent relatives. Only then does he portion out the pieces for himself and then the family members in order of age.

Don’t forget to slide a coin or good luck charm into the bottom before you put the cake on its platter [wrapped in tin foil].

420 grams (3 cups) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon citric acid

220 grams (1 cup) unsalted butter

400 grams (2 cups) sugar

4 eggs, at room temperature

150 grams (1 cup) blanched almonds, finely ground

grated zest of 1 lemon

240 ml (1 cup) milk, scalded and cooled to warm

120 ml (1/2 cup) brandy

Preheat the oven to 190ºC/375ºF.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and citric acid.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and, adding the sugar slowly, beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until each egg is completely absorbed. Stir in the crushed almonds and grated lemon peel. Then beat in the flour and the milk, a little at a time, alternately. When you have finished the milk, start trickling in the brandy.

Scrape the batter into a buttered cake tin (24 cm/9.5 inches in diameter) and bake 40 minutes to 1 hour. The cake is done when a knife stuck into the middle comes out clean.

Chronia Polla!