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Santa Got Run Over by the Unseelie Court
2002-12-22 1:15 pm
the holidays are breathing down our necks, so i've decided to dedicate this space to Hellenic christmas traditions and their pagan(gasp!) origins.the image of santa claus is a fairly recent arrival in greece, but as there is no saint klaus in orthodoxy his job has been assumed by Saint Basileus, a swarthy and skinny looking sermonizer and theologian, one of the 3 great Hierarchs of Christianity (Roman and Byzantine). apparently saint billy has lightened up over the years, gained a few pounds and spends his time spoiling greek orthodox kids the world over.
but before the obese man in hot red, there were the kalikantzaroi, and thankfully, they have survived the onslaught of Coca-Cola marketing and the geographic metastasis of commercial holiday images.
kalikantzaroi (pronounced kha-lee-KHAN-tza-ree... by the way, if i hear any of you "erasmians" pronouncing it "roy", i will disembowel you and hang you by your guts) are evil faeries that walk the earth for the 12 days between christmas day and the Day of Epiphany. They are small, dark skinned, tusked, red-eyed, cloven hoofed, and very ugly. As the lore goes, the kalikantzaroi live underground, when winter comes (in the greco-roman solar calendar) they come out of hiding with their axes in order to chop down the Tree that anchors the earth, and generally wreck as much havoc on the countryside as they possibly can in 12 days. to this day, pepole leave food out for them, typically sausages and sweets. their origin according to folklorists and anthropologists are in the winter solstice rituals of ancient greece (rituals that lasted in their original form, up until about 12th century Byzantium) known as the Kronians, the Kalanda, and the Vroumalia, where celebrants donned dionysean attire and carried on like drunk greeks usually do. The Church attempted to erase the pre-christian significance of these events by making the 12-day period time in which the birth and epiphany of christ would be celebrated. The 6th Ecumenical Synod apparently outlawed these festivals starting in the 7th century, much good it did as they didn't disappear for another 400 years. However, some aspects of these festivals survive in many parts of greece, in one form or another, the kalikantzaroi being one of them.
so there you have it, this is as educational as this diary gets. if you are interested in this topic and would like to know more, go read a book.
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