Christmas in Athens, Greece

After many years, we decided to go to Greece for Christmas this year. The last time we made the trip to Greece for Christmas, I had promised myself that I will not do it again. Traveling to Greece for 10 days or so given the jet lag, ten hours on the plane each way from New York city, and the cost of the tickets is not a worthy proposition. However, my kids convinced me to give it another try this year. We ended up having a great time.

From what I remembered as a kid (40-50 years ago), decorating for Christmas was not a big thing like it is in the US. I’d say this is still the case. There are some pockets of nice decorations throughout Athens but they are relatively limited. Syntagma (the constitution square) has always been the place to go during Christmas and that is still the case. It has a nice Christmas tree and several other decorations. The other square that seems to be well decorated is Omonoia. Omonoia is well known for its fountains and the decorations blended well with the fountains as you can see from the picture. The one street that has always been well decorated is Ermou which is a pedestrian street which I call the shoe street since every other store seems to be a shoe store. When I was a kid, my mom used to always bring me to Ermou to buy shoes and the number of shoe stores on the street seems to only have increased since then. There are some areas that have grown in popularity since I left Greece. One of the most popular during the Christmas season these days is Psyrri (very close to the Monastiraki Metro station). The most famous place there is the Little Kook with its over the top Christmas decorations. The decorations were really impressive and the picture doesn’t quite do it justice. The area was extremely crowded but worth checking out. Some people were even brave enough to be served at the store (I think it serves mostly desserts).

The biggest highlight of our trip was the “Night of the Wishes” event organized by the city on Christmas Eve in front of the town hall in Kotzia square. During the event, the city gives out small hot air balloons (lanterns) to each family. These balloons are made of some fire-resistant cloth that is connected through some strings to a flammable square at the bottom. Each family is responsible for lighting the square at the bottom of the balloon on fire which heats up the air inside the balloon. As a result, the balloons fly in the air as you can see in the picture. Each family is supposed to release their balloons at the same time but many jumped the gun and released early. We were on the late side because we didn’t know that you are supposed to bring a lighter and had to wait to borrow one from somebody else after they had successfully launched their balloon. Launching the balloons was not as easy as it looks and it was surprising that there were no accidents with so many people close to each other with burning balloons. Eventually everybody seemed to be successful in launching their balloons and everybody claimed their balloon was the best (ours definitely flew the highest). It was really a very memorable experience and I highly recommend it if you are in Athens for Christmas.

Even though the “Night of Wishes” was a great experience, a big reason we came to Greece was the food. During Christmas, the most memorable things to try are the sweets and the tsoureki. There are two main sweets eaten during Christmas in Greece: melomakarona (made out of honey, flower, and nuts) and kourabiedes (distinguishale by the white icing sugar on the outside). In the picture, melomakarona are on the left and kourabiedes on the right. Greeks have very strong opinions about which one is better. Our family in on the melomakarona camp. One of our goals during this trip was to find the best melomakarona in Athens. We had to scale that back though. After research I discovered that there about about 50 stores selling melomakarona within a mile or so from where we were staying and it looked infeasible to try all of them. We narrowed down the list to half a dozen of the best rated stores. The outcome was that they were all amazing and very hard to say that one was better than the other. We ended up eating several pounds of these sweets and as expected I ended up gaining a few pounds as a result.

Tsoureki is a kind of sweet bread that you can buy throughout the year. It is also the star in Greece on New Year’s eve. Greeks eat what is called Vassilopita on that day which is basically a tsoureki (although different regions have variants of Vassiolopita that looks more like a cake). Greeks hide a coin in Vassilopita on New Year’s eve. They then divide it among the people that are gathered for the New Year’s eve celebration and whoever gets the coin in their piece is considered the “lucky one” with good fortune guaranteed for the new year. My family has been buying their Vassilopita from the same store since the 1970s. My kids love their tsoureki and we pay them a visit whenever we are in Greece regardless of season. The place is called Varsos, in the Kifisia suburb of Athens. It has been around since 1892 and one of the few stores that have maintained their reputation for such a long period (although I heard some rumors that there were periods of decline since I’ve bee in the US). Kifisia is a very popular town in Athens for Greeks to do their shopping in and it has grown tremendously since the 1970s with many stores appearing and disappearing on a regular basis. Varsos has been the one constant. Their tsoureki, melomakarona, kourabiedes, galaktompoureko, and the rest are some of the best in Greece. If you are in Athens for Christmas, you have to visit the store. You can get to Kifisia from the center of Athens via the subway.