Our Cretan Christmas Star

In Greece, Christmas is a less important festivity and celebration than Easter, but this does not mean that it is ignored. Tourist souvenir shops have suddenly been into shops wholly devoted to selling Christmas decorations in abundance. Fortunately, the cities are not drowned in the commercialism of Christmas as in the UK, though there is still a strong feeling of yuletide (probably more relevant here with all the wood-burning stoves keeping homes warm). Schools have finished and youngsters can be seen in the streets with their red Santa hats, and carols are played in the supermarkets (in English and Greek) just to make you really homesick.

However, everything is much more relaxed and our expeditions for Christmas cards to send to friends and family at home have proved successful, even if the wording is in Greek! Our only problem is that the local post office does not seem to be geared up for the onslaught of Xmas cards (there have even been mutterings at the kafenion) and we have had to collect our parcels from the PO rather than receiving them in the village.

Our town of Vrysses has its Xmas street lights ablaze and most of the shop windows have some colourful decorations. Most impressive is centre piece of the nativity, about half life-size!. However, I came home yesterday to find that a wonderful illuminated star had been attached to the street light outside our house … how about that for a sign that WE have arrived, though if three kings arrive (we already have the shepherds) I will be concerned.

Turkeys wander the local roads looking decidedly worried, and the pigs below our garden bought it yesterday. But hey, that’s what Xmas is about, though I’m used to dealing with things that are wrapped in cellophane, don’t move and sit prettily on Waitrose’s shelves.

So we are ready for our quiet Christmas …I think? At least the mountains will give us a white Christmas to look at. Merry Christmas everyone, Kala Xristoyenna. Hronia Polla

Up a tree ...or harvesting the olives

Up a tree… or harvesting the olives

It is the time of year to harvest the olives, and as the weather has been dry and sunny for the past few weeks, there has been great active around. Pickups have been racing about with nets and olive picking equipment and there is also an influx of migrant workers to help with the picking.

As we are total novices, I think that we have made hardwork of the task, even though we only have six trees, only five with olives (it has been a poor year because of the unusual weather in the summer). In addition, we promised to pick our summer neighbours five fruiting trees as well…fools that we are. So gathering our nets and laying them out beneath each tree, we trashed about with what look like giant toasting forks to bring down the olives, sometimes climbing on a ladder to precarious heights. It was hard, muscle-aching work, but in spite of a brief respite due to inclement weather, we finished the deed, proudly carrying five hessian sacks to the press.

The village olive oil press is only 100 yards up the road, so it was just a matter of checking what documentation was needed before driving my heavily laden Yaris up to the press. The press continues to process olives on a small scale in the tradition way, not really like a factory at all, except for the sweet smelling smoke, black stained floor and the clunking of machinery. At night, the press is full of bright lights as they work long into the evening.

J extricated the best olives of our harvest to soak in salt, and store in glass jars, so that they can be eaten later in the year. It was very satisfying to finish the picking, as it was very tiring work, I hope it was worth it…. but there was no way that we would be irresponsible enough not to bother, as we would be seen in a very poor light.

Update: this evening we had half a churn of virgin olive oil delivered to our door by Y’s sons. From 160 kilos of olives, we have 28 kilos (24.6 kilos after payment) of oil. Apparently the quality is very good, although it has been a bad year in terms of quantity.