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Celebrating Christmas in Greece

So you’ve booked yourself a yacht charter to celebrate Christmas on a boat in the Greece – courtesy of PlainSailing.com, no doubt, at an exceptional price, and from one of our ten bases across Greece (from Lefkas and Corfu in the West to Kos and Rhodes in the East, and plenty of other bases in between).

You’re clearly all set for a beautiful week of sailing in tranquil waters and mild conditions, and if you don’t make lifelong friends on a holiday over Christmas (with all that goodwill and festive cheer sloshing around), then you never will!

But wait? How do they even celebrate Christmas in Greece? Well, for starters, ‘Seasons greetings’ are out, and you’ll need to get your head around ‘Kala Christougena’ which is more Happy than Merry Christmas, but given that one of the festive traditions is that you greet every visitor with a shot of alcoholic Raki, it’s likely to get merry soon enough.

Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas is replaces by Saint Vasilis – but worry not, he also has a present-delivery round on Christmas Eve, when he drops off small gifts for the children to open on Christmas morning.  The presents this ‘Santa’ gives tend to be more traditional (think wooden and old fashioned) plus a few sweets – meaning that kids these days will only get their digital overload from their parents later in the day.

Oddly enough, turkey is also the roast beast of choice in these parts – odd in the fact that it’s not a particularly prolific local animal, so 80% of their turkeys have to be imported.  Their turkes are also stuffed - stuffing includes olives in the South, pistachios in the West, and (more) Raki in the North of the country – but unfortunately, you’ll have to give roast potatoes a miss, as it’s served with rice or cous cous, and accompanied by a traditional salad, which can feature anything locally produced, but tends to include Feta and beetroot somewhere in the mix.

Another slight change is that the main Christmas dinner meal is served on Christmas Eve.  Generations tend to come together to feast together before heading onwards to church, with full bellies.  As you can imagine, Christmas in Greece is still about getting together with close family and friends and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Sadly, there isn’t room on the Greek Christmas table for Christmas crackers, although they are becoming more and more available as Hollywood Christmas films started to infiltrate.

If you want to celebrate Christmas in Greece properly, you’ll actually need to book a two-week charter (but that doesn’t sound too bad!) – because they celebrate for the full 12 days of Christmas.  The 6th January (Epiphany), which sees the arrival of the three wise men in the nativity scene, is celebrated with a parade through the local village, and culminates in their biggest party and meal (usually accompanied by dancing!).

If you haven’t yet booked your Christmas yacht charter, there’s still time to get things organised…