By Christina Savopoulos
Nothing encapsulates an Australian summer more than watching Christmas movies filled with fireplaces and lightly falling snow while the air conditioner blasts.
Christmas in Australia is unique for those of us who grew up associating the holiday with keeping cool from the sweltering heat outside. But some just want to escape the burning Australian sun. And who can blame them? Why not combine a holiday to Greece with a picture-perfect white Christmas?
I spoke with several Greek Australians who, over the years, have spent the festive season in different parts of Greece – Athens, Larissa, Elis, and Katerini. They all spoke fondly about the kindness and beauty of the country and its residents, especially how it transforms into a winter wonderland.
22-year-old Eleni Lykopandis spent December last year in Athens where she was “really immersed in Christmas.” She fondly remembers the streets of Athens being a “constant 24/7 Christmas light display…”
“It was beautiful,” she added. “Charity drives had started and kids had started caroling on the streets of Ermou.
“You’d walk down Monastiraki… and there’d be a bouzouki player there doing rebetika kalanta… which was really nice to see.”
Comparing the magically lit up Athens with Australia’s boiling Christmas, Eleni said “it actually felt like Christmas [in Greece]. It felt like we were about to celebrate something.”
While Christmas in Athens was the highlight of Eleni’s trip, New Year’s was a bigger celebration for Dion Papadopoulos. In 2022, he spent New Year’s Day in Larissa with his family where he went to church with his cousins to watch their pappou conduct the Divine Liturgy. Dion said after church, they would “go home and [his] yiayia would make the vasilopita.”
“It was a traditional vasilopita – not like the ones you buy – with pastry, fila, 15 layers, [like a] spanakopita. She would do it on the day, and she would hide the ‘flouri’ (gold coin) in it and spin,” Dion explained, referring to the traditional cultural practice of spinning the vasilopita tray to hide the coin.
Two decades prior in 2002, Jenny Kleftogiannis travelled to her grandmother’s village, Giannitsochori in Elis, where she “spent the most special and magical Christmas.”
She gathered her grandmother, Stavroula Papatheodorou, and her husband’s grandmother, Aggeliki Krokos, for lunch and “listened to the two grandmothers… exchanging stories of their Christmas spent during the war and the difficulties they went through.”
Jenny said she has “never experienced anything like it since.”
“People rave about Greek summer, but they really need to experience that magical side of a Greek Christmas in winter… It was a Christmas I’ll never forget or could ever repeat,” she said.
Jenny wishes “Australia had a white Christmas,” and I’m sure she’s not alone with that wish.
Nectaria T’s first trip out of Australia was in 1998 to spend the entire winter in Agios Dimitrios, Katerini. She recalls it being “the first and only time it’s actually felt like Christmas.”
“The snow, the whole village getting in on the Christmas spirit… church bells ringing and just the general village vibe of everyone saying ‘good morning’ and ‘xronia polla’,” Nectaria said.
While there aren’t any photos to document her trip, Nectaria’s impression of her Christmas in Greece was that “it was snowing, but it felt warm.”
Even if you haven’t been fortunate enough to travel and experience Greece’s white Christmas, enjoy the perks of Australia’s heat on Christmas Day. While this might sound like the cheesy final words of a classic Christmas film, Christmas is about the family and cultural traditions you surround yourself with.
