More than ever, the traditional Christmas table is something that brings us all together. Behind every festive dish lies a wish, a symbol, and often a simple, economical recipe - one that gathers people around the table and centers above all on love and hopes for a fruitful new year.
Translation | Amaryllis Tsegou
This year, let’s celebrate Christmas the traditional way, by filling our tables with nostalgic recipes that require neither special skills nor complicated techniques, drawn from our national culinary heritage - a cuisine rooted in warmth, memory, and togetherness.
Christmas traditions of the Aegean
From island to island in the Cyclades, many customs share common roots - such as the widespread tradition of pig slaughtering - yet each place maintains its own distinctive character.
On Tinos, the most characteristic custom is the Table of the Brotherhood. Each year, the kavos - the person responsible for the upkeep of the village church - hands over his duties to his successor. This transition is marked by a lavish, all-male feast featuring beef soup, stifado, and stuffed vine leaves. Guests bring their own wine, bread, and even their own cutlery.
On Naxos, the Christokoutsouro (Christmas log) burns in the fireplace for twelve days straight. Its ashes are later scattered over animals and plants for good luck. Housewives whitewash their courtyards and bake Christopsomo with raisins and walnuts, which is shared not only with people but also with the household animals. Stuffed lamb with wild greens and rice is also prepared. Being a mountainous, agricultural island, Naxos honors the pig-slaughtering tradition and is also known for its unique local carols, the kotsakia - playful, teasing verses accompanied by musical instruments.
Syros, the island of shipowners, decorates the traditional Christmas boat, symbolizing the new life brought to earth by Christ. During the Epiphany carols, children walk through the streets holding lanterns made from oranges. On Christmas Eve - known locally as Kali Vradiá - families attend the evening service and then eat fish with cauliflower.
On Mykonos, pig slaughtering plays a central role in the celebrations, producing louza, local sausages, and pork fat cooked with greens or cabbage. The festive table also includes melomakarona, foinikia, onion pie with local tyrovolia cheese, honey pie flavored with cinnamon, tyrovolia, and honey, as well as two Christopsoma - one for the people and one for the household animals. The festivities continue on Epiphany with the balosia, traditional dances accompanied by violins and bagpipes, a legacy from the Venetian era.
On Paros, Christmas carols are sung on Christmas Eve afternoon exclusively by boys. Housewives prepare Christopsomo, milk pie, xerotigana, melachrino (walnut cake), and petimezenia (melomakarona made with grape molasses). Stuffed chicken is cooked with patouda (red pumpkin), chicken livers, raisins, and cheese. On Christmas Day, chicken, turkey, or rooster is traditionally served - birds that move backward when they walk, symbolising the departing year - while roast pork is prepared for New Year’s Day.
On Sifnos, the carols differ greatly from those sung elsewhere in Greece. They consist of playful, improvised verses in the local dialect, sung in the streets from midday until evening on Christmas Eve. The festive table features Christopsomo scented with anise, oven-roasted pork, syglino, aspic, cured meats, foinikia, and diples (avgokalámara).
On Serifos, caroling takes on an entirely different form: only the men of the household sing the carols on Christmas Eve night as they make their way to the priest’s home to offer their bounamás (gift). Christmas Day itself is marked by an exuberant village feast.
On Santorini, the festive table always includes fava, broad beans, and tomato fritters. In the past, schoolchildren would visit their teacher, sing carols, and offer the Kalichéra, the traditional Christmas gift.
On Kythnos, Christopsomo is baked with anise and mastic, while on Antiparos mastic-flavored cookies are prepared.
Andros is well-known for its kourabiedes, fragrant with orange blossom water and generous amounts of almonds. Melomakarona are equally popular, as is pasteli, traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day so the year ahead will be sweet.
On the first day of the year, Amorgos serves koftó - wheat cooked with onion, cheese, and olive oil - as a wish for a good harvest.
Finally, in Anafi they prepare kouféto, a spoon sweet made from blanched almonds and pumpkin boiled in honey. Here, Christopsomo is scented with wild saffron (zaforistó), which grows locally on the island.
Christmas celebrations in the Dodecanese
Across all the islands of the Dodecanese, pork is an indispensable part of the festive table, along with cumin-scented stuffed vine leaves (sarmadakia), a celebratory dish shared across the islands, as well as diples, which are equally essential.
In Rhodes, on Christmas Eve, young women place a dish of wheat at the center of the table, with a sprig of glyfóni (pennyroyal mint) standing upright in the middle. They burn incense over it and pray to Christ. At midnight, the virtuous girls are said to see the dried branch turn green and sprout anew. In Archangelos, Christopsomo is first taken to the church, and the festive table is set from the night before, decorated with the Christmas bread, honey, and plenty of nuts.
Additionally, podariko (the first-footing of the year) has its own special celebration: the family chooses one of its members and seats them in the middle of the room. They are fed walnuts and honey, while music, dancing, and merriment unfold around them. If the year turns out to be a good one, the same person is chosen to perform the podariko again the following year. Pig slaughtering in Rhodes is accompanied by exuberant feasting, with the favorite meze of the day being milla and tsiríngia, made from pork fat fried until only small, crisp pieces of meat remain.
In Kos, people prepare kouloures, xýsmata (wheat breads made with mizithra cheese and herbs), and afréna (seven-leaven breads). On Christmas Day, young and old alike go out together to sing carols and exchange wishes of “T’ apochrónou!” (“Until next year!”), receiving treats in return such as kourabiedes, melomakarona, rustic local wine, and savory meze. Interestingly, pork here is called paskátiko, since Christmas on Kos is referred to as “Pascha.” Local sarmousádes replace baklava: made with phyllo, sprinkled with sesame seeds, fried into rolls, and served drenched in honey syrup.
On Astypalaia, at Christmas time people hang the lower jawbone of the slaughtered pig above the fireplace to protect the household from kallikántzaroi (mischievous goblins believed to appear during the Twelve Days of Christmas).
In Symi, dessert-making begins as early as December 12th, the feast of Agios Spyridon. Traditional treats include panierákia (tarts filled with walnuts), Kopenhagen, svíngoi, baklava, kourabiedes made with lye (ash water), which gives them their characteristic crunch, and poungia, small parcels filled with sesame.
Karpathos celebrates Christmas with rooster or pork cooked with leeks. On Christmas Day, after the morning service, families drink a strengthening broth made from the poultry that will be cooked later that evening.
Christmas in Crete
Pig slaughtering, a custom that has endured since antiquity, is the island’s most important Christmas tradition. The family pig is slaughtered every Christmas Eve to prepare smoked apaki, cured syglino, vinegar-marinated sausages, tsigarídes (small pieces of fat cooked with spices in a pan), omathiές (intestines stuffed with rice, liver, and raisins), tsiladia (a meat aspic made from the head and scented with bitter orange), all staples of the festive table, along with meat roasted over lemon leaves.
From the pig’s entrails, soothsayers predict what the coming year will bring, and nothing from the animal goes to waste - everything has its use, even the bladder, which is turned into a ball for the children. On Christmas Eve night, the housewives begin kneading the festive dough in a large basin, and as it rises, everyone celebrates the moment of Christ’s birth.
Christopsomo, kneaded with cinnamon, honey, rosewater, sesame seeds, and cloves, is the ceremonial, symbolic bread and the centerpiece of the celebration. On its surface, the housewives pour all their skill into decorating it with elaborate symbolic motifs - leaves, birds, crosses, birds again, snakes (which are believed to bring good luck), and nuts. On Christmas Day, the head of the household makes the sign of the cross over it, breaks it, and shares it with the entire family, a custom that symbolises the Last Supper, Christ offering the bread of life to His faithful, as well as Holy Communion.
During the festive season, sweets take center stage: xerotýgana, kourabiedes (their powdered sugar symbolizing the snow on Crete’s mountains), myzithrópites, katiméria, sarikópites, loukoumades and above all koumpanakia or loukoumia, which were never absent from the home and served as an easy treat for children singing carols or for passersby. They bear no resemblance to the classic loukoumi; instead, they are small pieces of yeast-leavened dough that are fried and drenched in grape molasses, honey, sesame seeds, cinnamon, and cloves. They are eaten on New Year’s Day with the wish that the year ahead will be sweet.
On the eve of Epiphany, all of Crete eats palikária or ospriáda, a mixed legume dish. Tradition has it that on this night the heavens are open and animals gain human speech to voice their complaints to God. Therefore, people made sure to keep their mouths busy with this special dish, mixing some of it with straw and scattering it in their fields, with the wish that the crops would bear fruit and thrive and also so that birds would eat and not peck at the newly sprouted seeds. On the same day, the animals’ bells are gathered and taken to the church to be blessed by the priest.
Serenading in the Ionian Islands
In Kefalonia, people don’t wish one another “Happy New Year,” but instead say “Kali Apokopí” - a good break from the old year - and decorate their homes with branches of myrtle and strawberry tree. On New Year’s Eve, everyone takes to the streets, sprinkling one another with cologne and singing, “We’ve come with roses and blossoms to wish you many years.” Here too, the Christopsomo is decorated with a seal, walnuts, almonds, and five extensions symbolizing the hand of Christ. The head of the household sprinkles the bread with three drops of olive oil and recites the blessing: “Christ is born, and the light increases.”
In Zakynthos, Christmas Eve is a fasting day that is celebrated simply, with broccoli, olives, and wine. On Christmas Day, the table features avgolemono (an egg-and-lemon soup with meat or poultry) and meat with potatoes. Zakynthian kouloura, which is cut on Christmas rather than New Year’s Day, is a demanding but aromatic festive bread, richly scented with orange, mastic, cinnamon, and anise, and made with wine, cognac, raisins, pine nuts, and walnuts - a recipe left behind by the Venetians as part of the island’s culinary heritage. On New Year’s Day, everyone sings the “Ai Vasilides” in the streets, Zakynthos’ improvised local carols, while on New Year’s Eve they celebrate with blaounes (fried fritters dipped in grape molasses).
In Lefkada, during these days everyone is looking for “koutsounes”, wild onions believed to bring good luck, which are then used to decorate each home. A remnant of the Venetian era, “Diana” brings all the island’s residents out into the streets, following the Philharmonic from as early as 4 a.m. on New Year’s Day. Among them are “Doratzides” who bring laughter to crowds with their pranks.
