OUR FIRST CHRISTMAS IN CRETE

With all the ingredients that made up Christmas this year – far away from most of the family, poor weather and meagre funds to spend on presents – it could have been a miserable time but wasn't!

First of all, we took our mulled wine down to the cafeneon on Christmas Eve as a little Christmas warm up for our kind friends there and although they were not used to wine which did not accompany a meal, they were reassured when I served it in small coffee cups and it came with a tray of cake and mince pies. However, they could not accept even this tiny offering without giving back a bag of oranges and a bag of eggs. How they would have coped with a full-blown Christmas present is difficult to say because I came to the conclusion that it would just make things even more difficult – so I still have a bag of small items bought at the Christmas Bazaar to think about later.

I asked about the start time of the service in the village church on Christmas morning. They were a little vague about this – Angeliki said 7.00 a.m., Costas said 8.00 a.m. (or when the bell rings (“… hear it not Duncan ...”) – so when the Church bell started to ring at 7.10 a.m. I scrambled into clothes and rushed up to church thinking that it all would be happening already. I was the only person in the congregation and had my pick of chairs so sat at the back to see what would happen. Over the next THREE HOURS people started to arrive (largely when they felt like it) lit candles, kissed icons, greeted one another, spoke on mobile phones, stood up and sat down a lot while one, two and then three people chanted from books at the front. Every so often the priest appeared from behind the screen and did something for a minute or two and then disappeared again where from the “noises off” I began to wonder if he was looking for a screwdriver at the bottom of a very full metal tool box. Also, the red damask curtain over the doorway in the front iconostasis kept twitching and being poked from the back and it reminded me of a school play when there were lots of children on a stage waiting to start – except it was only puppet theatre size. You will gather from this that I was way out of my comfort zone and trying to piece together a liturgy from the odd snatches of words that I could hear – kyrie eleison, cosmos, Jesu, Christos and Alleluia! Feeling very much as if I was in the land of C S Lewis (ie. Narnia when it was always winter and never Christmas), it was very cheering when Father Christmas arrived in the guise of the priest who was now wearing a long red cape and carrying an incense burner to which lots of sleigh bells had been attached. (that was what the toolbox sounds had been all about) !  Reassuring sounds of Amins, amen, Amin started to happen and the chanters at the front snapped all the books shut and ladies began to pick up their enormous handbags. Alleluia indeed – we had friends arriving for lunch and I had been there, trapped behind all the late arrivals for hours, thinking that I could easily slip out when there was a natural break … all my assumptions had been WRONG! I really did miss the good of C of E, a few old fashioned carols, a few quiet moments for my own prayers and the familiar lessons of the nativity – although Radio 4 Carols from Cambridge had been a lovely start to Christmas the day before.

The dog's loved cheese straws!

Puppy-dog found a nice spot close to the fire

The next ingredients to our Christmas pudding were the arrival of Anna with a lovely fresh turkey to get quickly in the oven, and Nigel and Maria with a box of hard-to-come-by crackers, mountains of bags and bundles and their three dogs. Our friends had hoped to leave their rescue dogs with neighbours for the day but with a new – not yet house trained puppy – this had not been possible. So with a few power cuts, a kitchen full of doggies sniffing tantalising smells of turkey cooking and a puppy who kept wanting to stand on our feet while we were wielding pans of hot stuff – it could have been a disaster but somehow wasn't. The dogs soon settled down, we did play all our silly games, had a fantastic turkey dinner and lots of good cheer.

We were delighted with our "loo warming" present!

Our friends are very creative and brought several home made items, good ideas and kept us laughing while Anna firmly insisted that she did not want to join in the game and then kept joining in anyway, despite all her protests. It all worked very well and not a TV set in sight! The best idea was a jam jar full of extra one line cracker jokes which Nigel had noted down over the previous few months and put on slips of paper to share at the table. 10 out of 10 for creative ideas! Maria kept every scrap of cracker and wrapping paper to re-use for collages, paper sculpture and origami artwork. She is sought out for her handiwork where they live and makes a small living from making fine crochet, needlework and woven items also giving lessons from time to time. It is great to spend time discussing art and crafty things with Maria and a real shame that they live such a distance from us.

Extra Christmas Cracker jokes were a good idea!

Sadly everyone had to leave quite early in the morning and left us with a house full of food which we are trying to either eat, share or conserve in some way or another! We have had lots of skype contacts with family in the UK and Oceania – a great comfort in the depths of winter and a wonder to catch glimpses of their hot summer. We are off now to get some logs in and keep the home fires burning for the next few days. Chronia Polla and God bless us one and all!

GETTING READY FOR CRETAN CHRISTMAS

K and I had always understood that Christmas in Crete was far overshadowed by the celebration of Greek Easter, but we have been surprised to see all the shops decorating their windows beautifully with very artistic displays and the odd snatch of a Christmas carol at one or two street corners. There were many more Christmas Cribs around than in the UK and so we are confident that the Cretans haven't completely forgotten about the child born in a manger and what it was all about in the first place. We thought it would be interesting to discover the local traditions and, for our part make some mulled wine and mince pies to take round to our neighbours Costas and Angeliki at the cafeneon on Christmas Eve either before or after the village church service and hope that this will be acceptable.

As Christmas trees do not grow on the island, all the trees we have seen are artificial imports and therefore very expensive. However, when we were pollarding our tree at the front of the house earlier in the autumn to give Angeliki's goats some welcome greenstuff, one of the lower limbs did have a rather Xmas tree type shape – so we took off the leaves, put it on one side and thought about how we could use it instead.

It looks OK from a distance!

The result was slightly in the style of Salvador Dali but if you stand at the right point in the living room and close one eye – it does look very festive. Along with the gifts of oranges, cinnamon sticks, cloves and nutmeg, we have enough to make the house look pretty and will not go short of vitamin C over the festive period.

Looking West with the White Mountains far away on the horizon

December weather is very warm in Crete but I have learned that it is warm outside and cold inside the house. On Sunday, we noticed that there were a lot of strange people in the village making their way to the village church and we wondered if this was a special Greek Orthodox festival. The weather was sharp and cold when we got up, but the sun shone strongly and we thought we would explore the olive groves and vineyards beyond the village and find out whether we could walk down to the sea. Our path took us up hill all the way and small birds with songs like skylarks darted in and out of the long grasses as we made our way through farmland, olive trees, heathland and rocky slopes for a good long walk. A flock of sheep hopefully made their way over to us expecting that we would bring them feed – but soon realised that we were not their owners and turned away again. We kept climbing up and up until we could see a magnificent view in all directions. Blue, calm sea in one direction, Mount Psiloritis to the South covered with a silky sheen of fresh snow and ice, the White Mountains to the West and a rumpled counter pane of fields, villages, orchards and olive groves closer to us. With all the thick layers I had donned in the morning, I was boiling hot and had to take off coats and jumpers until we got home and went indoors again. 

We were too high up to reach the beach

Kimon was ready to go back!

Sadly, we learned that the people going to church were attending the funeral of our friend Nikos' son-in-law, which means that his daughter Georgia has been widowed early in life with young adult children. We had no idea and were grappling with words when Nikos, visibly shaken, came round to see us later on. It is at times like this when not having the necessary Greek words is a real burden and shows me that I have to try much harder to learn. I ended up doing the only thing I could think of by baking a cake to show our feelings, even if we could not articulate them.

With the financial troubles and austerity measures which have now been imposed, things have changed a lot during the year we have been in Greece, Many of their government departments are being completely shaken up and we have so much more to learn. However, we realise that most Greeks are struggling to understand all the new systems which are being put into place – so we are not alone and will have to puzzle it all out together.

We are planning to have friends to stay over Christmas weekend and plan to gather around the Log Burner here at home, with good traditional fare and home made gifts, silly board games and Skype on all day to catch various children in various parts of the world. Cretans have a celebration dinner of pork on Christmas Eve. We have learned from our village friends that simple gifts of food and friendship are best and have surprised many of our friends by sharing big bags of oranges, lemons and olive oil which are so much more scarce and expensive in the towns. We swapped oranges for broccoli during the week and wonder if this may be one of the ways forward as people's belts are having to get tighter. We think that it was a lesson learned well here in the chequered history of the island which has been occupied by so many different forces over the centuries - that everything had to be tended and grown for sharing – and it seems to have become a long term tradition. What better way to encourage true health, wealth and happiness.

HAVE A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR.

DECEMBER IN CRETE or PLUMBING THE DEPTHS

Christmas items for sale from a local school

Last year when I was still working in London and travelling back and forth to work on the train, my sister in law kept phoning us up from Crete to tell us how wonderful the weather was and how they were all still swimming because it was so hot. As we were falling over on the ice in England and freezing on station platforms at unearthly times of the day and night, all this news was absolutely sickening and we kept begging her to stop.

With this in mind,  I won't go on too much about the beautiful days we have had for the last few weeks and how we keep pinching ourselves and reminding ourselves that it is December already and how will we get used to sunshine at Christmas time.  Where did this year go?

It has been a very topsy-turvy month for the Croziers altogether. First of all, we noticed that a small puddle on the bathroom floor which we thought just appeared after a shower onto the floor tiles and was not anything to worry about.  As time went on, we realised that it was a more serious leak and that a pipe must be broken somewhere. Sadly "Hunt-the-Pipe" could not take place without dismantling the entire bathroom – which was on our list of things to do – but not yet a while due to financial constraints. However, we realised that the work had be be brought forward and our friendly builder turned up with trailers, concrete mixers, picks and shovels and took the whole room apart - floor, walls and ceiling. 

We were actually very glad to see the back of the faded rose pink wall and floor tiles and set off to choose a new colour scheme. The builder switched round everything to give much more space, we have nice lights, mirror, storage, heater and no intriguing port hole into the shed (!) Check out before and after photos below (and sorry to be so boring but in a small village this sort of thing is hugely exciting and the workmen kept our neighbours entertained for 10 days).

Chania Waterfront 3rd Dec

As we had no working bathroom, we spent the time as guests of K's sister in the bright lights of Rethymnon and I had the chance to do Christmas shopping and prepare for the Annual CIC Christmas Bazaar in Chania which takes place every year to raise a lot of money for local charities. What a production! There were 60-70 stalls rented by local traders and some came even from Athens to sell their wares. Ceramics, textiles, jewellery, woodwork, home made food, drinks and preserves, soaps, decorations, metalwork – loads and loads to look at and charity raffle stalls run by CIC members. K and I manned the Bottle Stall – ably assisted by other members but the star attraction on our stall were the volunteers from the local Red Cross who turned up in their uniforms, donned Santa Hats and really got us better organised. If nothing else, I have learned the dos and don'ts of running a tombola because it is much more tricky than you think – especially if the event has to last over two days and you have to find some way of not running out of bottles!

The local Red Cross turned up and raffle ticket sales picked up!

The quality of entertainment was amazing with a school choir singing Greek and English carols, a jazz singer, a children's entertainer who did magic and all sorts of clever juggling tricks and then a brilliant circus performer who played loads of musical instruments and sang, wire walked, unicycled around between all the stalls and was astoundingly good. All this while, there were two kitchens – one inside and one outside providing chilli, mulled wine, sausages, teas and coffees etc. We believe that the bazaar raised over 12,000 Euros for local charities which was very impressive in these hard times.

Setting up the stalls in the old Customs House

Look Soph - they even had a Sindy Doll Boutique!!!!!

We were exhausted when it was over and needed a few days to unwind which was unfortunate because there was a lecture in Rethymnon on Archaeology a couple of days later with intricate catering arrangements including a buffet lunch which seemed to be slightly beyond the capabilities of the place where the event had been held but was enjoyable all the same. Then, once this was over, we drove back to the village to see what state the bathroom was in. Of course it was a vast improvement but there was builders dust and mess which had spread throughout the house and it needed sweeping, scrubbing and mopping from top to bottom. Every shelf and every cupboard! So today has been Cleaning Day One and tomorrow will be Cleaning Day Two!! Enough for now – we are absolutely flaked out!

BEFORE .......

AFTER!