CHANGING THE DATE

“What are you doing Christmas Eve?” Niko enquired. “Going to Midnight Mass?”

«Άκου εκεί Midnight Mass,” Stefo sniggered. “Like the good little Orthodox boy he is, he is going to go to the εσπερινό. You’ve been with the Catholics too long re. When are you going to come back to embrace the Dark Side of the Force?”

Niko was not only the first among our circle of friends to get married, he was also the first to marry out of the clan, having married a wonderful life-partner whose ancestors arrived here from Southern Italy. In the beginning, his mother was in tears and refused to accept her as the object of his adoration. Being enlisted to explain that all Southern Italians are Greek anyway, his mother brushed aside my arguments, repeating the mantra, «Παπούτσι από τον τόπο σου κι ας είναι μπαλωμένο». This mantra soon changed to «δεν πειράζει, να’ναι χέπυ τα παιδιά, ούνα ράτσα, ούνα φάτσα,» upon her learning that her sympethero was a quite well-off μπίλντας with an extensive portfolio of investment properties in Donnybrook and though we kept from her the fact that he had six other children, all of whom would presumably share in the inheritance until the day of the wedding, she managed to remain calm, smiling under the net of her fascinator, marvelling only that according to her, Italians seem to be obsessed with food and lack an understanding of the concept of kefi, which funnily enough is an observation my Assyrian relatives also make about the Greeks they come in contact with, I being possessed of not even one discernible even by X-Ray, party bone in my entire carcass.

By all accounts, Niko’s is a harmonious marriage.  Both his children were christened and confirmed in the Catholic Church, and attend Greek school after hours. Theirs is a serene existence of endless barbeques, birthdays and family dinners, punctuated by trips to Amalfi and Mykonos and they are splendidly content. It is only once a year that the internal equilibrium of the familial unit is sorely disrupted and that time is Christmas.

“Re, I wish we were παλαιοημερολογήτες,” Niko sighed as he nursed his beer, a robust Mountain Culture Moon Dust Stout.

“Vre αθεόφοβε, don’t talk about meat and paleo diets in front of Kalimniou,” Stefo chided him “He is supposed to be fasting.”

“Old Calendar, like the Russians,” Niko insisted. “I wish we were like them.”

Wishing that one resembles the Russians in any way is definitely not in season and I took great pains to point this out. I urged him to wait a while, for fashion has a funny habit of turning in on itself and returning like an ouroboros, or flared pants.

“I mean I wish we could celebrate Christmas on 7 January like all the other Orthodox. So much easier for all involved. No hassles, no dramas,” Niko continued wistfully.

“Yeah but if we did that, we would miss out on the Fota and going down to the holiday house in Rye,” Stefo spluttered incredulously. “So what would be the point of that?”

Nikos’ father in law’s holiday house is in Rosebud and on Christmas Day it is incumbent upon all his offspring, their significant others and progeny to make pilgrimage thereto and celebrate the Birth of Our Saviour, by means of an almighty feast ordered months in advance from the Chrisco catalogue, thereby creating a vast dilemma.

“My wife is accommodating on so many things,” Niko explained. “Greek school, giortes, as long as I drive the kids, no problems. But try to tell her that we need to go to my mum’s for Christmas and she won’t budge. Absolutely no way. I plead, I argue, nothing. Vre, I tell her, your mother has four sons, my mother has only got one son, it’s not fair, why should my parents have Christmas alone, the woman is supposed to go to the husband’s family, τίποτα. All I get are three stock responses: “We have Greek Easter with your parents. There is no such thing as Greek Christmas,” “We can see them on Boxing Day,” and “Your sister goes to your parents instead of her in-laws so why is there one rule for her and one for me?” And how many years of this now, my mum still won’t accept it. You know the deal: «Πρέπει να πατήσεις πόδι,» «αν ήσουν άντρας θα την έβαζες στη θέση της,» «φταίω εγώ για τις θυσίες που έκανα για σένα,» κάτι σκηνές, κάτι κλάματα, and then she won’t talk to me until after πρωτοχρονιά, when I go to mow the lawns.”

«Πρέπει να πατήσεις πόδι,» comes from the Greek marriage ceremony where the man is supposed to step on his wife’s foot,” Stefo mused. “But you wouldn’t know because you went full-metal Catholic. Kalimniou tried to step on his wife’s foot during the service, but he tripped and ended up stepping on himself instead.”

Stefo is currently possibly in his third-marriage, this being both because he is unsure whether the ceremony with the barmaid in the Turks and Caicos Islands is legally binding and also because her whereabouts are completely unknown after she defriended him from social media.

All the while Nikos was breathing heavily to the point of hyperventilation.  “What you are going through is not a new phenomenon,” I observed. “You’ve been married for two decades now. Why all of this Christmas angst all of a sudden?”

Niko looked up and shot me a look of abject misery. “Because you know what’s happening. The Holy Father and the Patriarch are in talks about changing the date of Easter.”

“Holy Father? Whose Holy Father?” Stefo guffawed. “Άκου εκεί Holy Father. You are so far gone vre…”

“Can you see?” Niko asked plaintively. “Not only are we going to cop strain at Christmas but at Easter too. At least up until now, we got to celebrate Easter with the oldies because of the difference in calendar. If they make the dates the same, what are we going to do? We can forget about Greek Easter.”

“It’s Orthodox Easter, not Greek Easter, you heretic!” Stefo interjected. “And anyway, what do you care? You’ve never seen the inside of a Greek church, even before you got married. But that’s what happens doesn’t it? The Greeks in Australia have no idea about our traditions and then as soon as you marry a “xeni” suddenly everyone remembers that they have customs and a faith.”

“No, you aren’t getting it,” Niko moaned. “What about the γκρίνια? What about the souvla? What about the lucky coin?...”

“Will you punch him, or will I?” Stefo snarled, rolling up his sleeves.

“This affects all of us who are in “mixed marriages,” Niko continued. “These prelates, they go off and do their negotiations and make their press releases and take their fancy photos but they don’t think of the practical consequences of their actions. Effectively, these guys are placing marriages in peril at a time when mankind should be celebrating peace and tolerance. At the Carol Service at Saint Patrick’s last year…”

“Seriously, δεν γλιτώνεις εσύ,” Stefo buried his face in his palms, in despair. «Τον πάπα να καταράσθε διότι αυτός είναι η αιτία του κακού». Saint Kosmas the Aetolian. He knew a thing or two. What I can’t understand is why our Patriarch wants to submit to the Catholics. I sense a plot by the Illuminati, the Bildebergers and the Freemasons. We already changed the date of Christmas to accommodate them and split off from the rest of the Orthodox και τι καλό είδαμε. My spiritual father….”

“My understanding is that the issue is a matter of calendar and not concelebration,” I ventured. “The idea is that the Catholics would adopt our date for Easter.”

“Which is precisely why this thing is so disastrous!” Nikos yelled, pounding his fist on the table. “Catastrophic! We shouldn’t celebrate together! We need to be separate! Forever! Otherwise we are stuffed! Last time, my mother said she was going to xegrapsei me from her will. This is awful.”

He remained silent for a while, his hand clutching at his unsweetened iced soy decaf caramel latte with no cream and extra syrup as if to crush it and relenting just at the last moment. Then, regaining his composure, he ventured:

“What we need to do is a petition. Of all Greeks in mixed marriages right across Australia. A petition to the Holy F… - I mean to the Pope and the Patriarch asking them not to create a common date for Easter. And while we are at it, to go back to the old date for Christmas. Believe me, this will preserve relationships, protect inheritances and save Christmas. Can you draft up something? Who do we send it to? Should we do it online or paper?’

“Don’t look at me,” Stefo pulled winced. “I’m off to Tahiti on the 20^th and I won’t be back until after the New Year. Tell me Kalimniou, what do you plan to do for Christmas? Parents’ house or in-laws?”

I am going to do what I have always done: Wake up the kids in the early morning and rush to church for the Christmas liturgy. Rush back home so they can open the presents. Rush to my in-laws where I will reminisce about my late father-in-law who would always dominate the conversation with a lengthy discourse about how all Christians and indeed all humanity should put aside its differences and come together and I will think about how much I miss him. Delicately accept my mother-in-law’s constant exhortations to gorge myself on the finest Assyrian cuisine ever to grace a table in the West and finally, rush off to my parents for an unbridgeably vast Christmas lunch and stoically pretend that I haven’t already eaten.

Petition? Not for me thanks. I would not have it any other way.

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 21 December 2024

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATRICIDE: THE REVOLT OF THE ZEALOTS OF THESSALONICA

 

"...one after another the prisoners were hurled from the walls of the citadel and hacked to pieces by the mob of the Zealots assembled below. Then followed a hunt for all the members of the upper classes: they were driven through the streets like slaves, with ropes round their necks-here a servant dragged his master, there a slave his purchaser, while the peasant struck the strategos and the labourer beat the soldiers…."

Five hundred years before the anti-aristocratic purges of the French Revolution, Demetrius Cydones described in 1345, an orgy of violence that was visited upon the ruling classes of Thessalonica. For between 1342 to 1350, in the dying century of the Byzantine Empire, the people took control of the city for themselves. Known as the Zealots, scholars still debate as to whether they possessed a coherent ideological programme. While some suggest they represented a proto-Marxist movement focused on wealth redistribution, others argue they were primarily opportunistic, exploiting chaos to consolidate power. Regardless, it cannot be doubted that their rule, marked as it was by a rejection of external authority and emphasis on significant local self-governance, was seen as a horrific aberration by contemporary chronicles, one that disturbed the natural order of things.

Before the Zealots, there were others who went by that name. In the thirteenth century, according to the historian Gregoras, the “Zealots” were a faction predominantly composed of monks and lower-ranking clergy who gained significant influence among the Byzantine populace, likely due to their anti-aristocratic stance, which brought them into conflict with the “politicians,” a rival faction made up mainly of intellectuals and senior clergy. As a radical group, the Zealots often opposed imperial policies, particularly on contentious issues such as the union of the Churches.

Furthermore, their religious background informed their social beliefs. Thessaloniki, a thriving mercantile entrepot had already engendered the writings of theologians who stressed social reform. Saint Nicholas Cabasilas in his “Oration against Usury” condemned the widespread practice of moneylending in the city as usury: taking from something that provides no value. Both he and founder of Hesychasm, Saint Gregorios Palamas also argue that there was no absolute right to property and income if more is accumulated than is necessary, considering it to be a greater sin when the hoarding of money leads to the manipulation of the poor. In their view, profits derived from such endeavours were illegitimate and should be redistributed among the needy.

By the beginning of the fourteenth century, Thessalonica, the second largest in population and wealth city of the Byzantine Empire had begun to resent the overlordship of Constantinople and indeed had already revolted against it: Thus during the first Palaiologan civil war in 1322, the citizens of Thessalonica removed the despot appointed by Constantinople, Constantine Palaiologos from power and instead sided with the rebels Andronikos III and his ally John Kantakouzenos. In the second civil war, Alexios Apokaukos, rebel, arrived with a fleet and appointed renegade Michael Monomachos as governor. Despite these official appointments, the true power in Thessalonica rested with the Zealots, a radical group led by a certain Michael Palaiologos, who shared the title of archon with the governors. The city's administration also involved a council of local aristocrats and influential citizens, emphasising civic engagement in local governance.

Michael and his brother Andreas Palaiologos key figures in the Zealot administration that opposed Kantakouzenos identified with the imperial Palaiologos dynasty, indicating that despite authors describing theirs as a peasant revolt, they still attempted to draw legitimacy from the ruling family, even though their relationship to them was probably a political concoction. Despite their revolutionary activities, the Zealots continued to recognize the authority of Emperor John V Palaiologos, possibly while seeking a semi-autonomous status for Thessalonica.

Ostensibly, the Zealots constituted a political movement that seemed to favour and express the aspirations of the lower classes of Thessaloniki. Emperor John Kantakouzenos records their radicalism according to the following terms: “They roused up the people against the aristocracy, and for two or three days, Thessalonica was like a city under enemy occupation and suffered all the corresponding disasters. The victors went shouting and looting through the streets by day and by night, while the vanquished hid in churches and counted themselves lucky to be still alive. When order returned, the Zealots, suddenly raised from penury and dishonour to wealth and influence, took control of everything and won over the moderate citizens, forcing them to acquiesce and characterizing every form of moderation and prudence as “Kantakouzenism.””

Contemporary chroniclers describe how property was seized from the wealthy and redistributed in a manner anticipating the Bolshevik Revolution. Also prefiguring the Bolshevik Revolution was not only the Zealots’ single minded radicalism in a manner reminiscent of Lenin’s creation a tightly organized and ideologically disciplined corps of professional revolutionaries. They met at night in secret cabals or cells and determined on courses of action and the punishment of the wealthy. One grandee accused of crimes against the state was arrested in secret, tried in public and then was stripped, trussed up, and paraded through the streets, sentenced to be beaten up by five ‘notoriously vulgar’ women, before finally being set free. Again in a manner akin to the Bolsheviks alliance with the sailors of the Kronstadt naval base, the Zealots were assisted both in their seizure of power and the maintenance of their rule by the sailors and dock-workers of Thessalonica, the parathalassioi, who had been set up as a military association by Emperor Michael Palaiologos and as a result, already wielded significant political power in the city. In this regard, the late Father George Metallinos  observed: ‘It is indeed clear that - in spite of the confusion in the sources - the Zealots of Thessaloniki constituted a social group, as discerned by the People. It had ties to the "parathalassioi" - a well-known guild with Palaiologos family members at its head. The collaboration between Zealots and parathalassioi was obviously a coinciding of mutual interests. . . The Zealots identified with the people and they expressed the demands of the lower social strata, which partially coincided with those of the army as well.”

While playing to the desires of the city’s inhabitants, the Zealots’ agenda was multi-faceted. Confiscated properties from supporters of John Kantakouzenos were redistributed among the Zealot’s allies rather than benefiting the working-class. While the general population harboured anti-aristocratic sentiments, the Zealots' primary goals seemed more aligned with forging strategic alliances with power-brokers who would help to keep them in power, rather than with championing social equality or ideological reform as a primary aim. That they did so through consensus and collective decision-making may merely an outcome of their monastic background rather than a genuine revolution in their way of thinking and scholars still argue over the nature of their rule. Greek writer Kostas Lampou for example, emphasizes the more progressive aspects of their governance, maintain that the Zealots: “took measures towards intellectual freedom, freedom of speech and religious tolerance. They abolished all privileges, the right of private property and confiscated the wealth of the nobility. Direct election was established for all government offices, courts and religious offices. The wealth of the church was taken and separation of church and state established. They established status of equality before the law, released their serfs and gave equal rights to foreigners.”

Ultimately, Zealot rule proved to be of a transient nature. The threat of Serbian domination under the expansionist Stefan Dusan, their inability to protect the inhabitants from the ravages of a bout of the Plague and the reconciliation of the rebel John Kantakouzenos and the Byzantine Emperor eroded their legitimacy with the people. In 1349, the people of Thessaloniki rose up against the Zealots and deposed, culminating in the triumphal entry of the Emperor John Palaiologos into the city the next year.

Assessing the downfall of the Zealots, Matthew Raphael Johnson comments: “The zealots failed because the coalition against the landed oligarchy just meant that the poor were cooperating with the merchant class that sought to take their place. Their movement weakened and soon split into factions.” In his mind, their assumption of power was teleological: “There was some change in the form of redistributed property, the confiscated lands of the nobility and, most importantly, limitations on usury. This was a rebellion protesting a power vacuum, the domination of foreigners and the impending sense of dread knowing that the empire was near the end.”

A few decades later, Thessaloniki would fall to the Ottomans and though it would be recovered through diplomacy, it would soon share the fate of the rest of the Empire. The revolt of the Zealots in its dying days thus stands as a poignant and significant death throe of dignity, with social activism as its burial shroud.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 14 December 2024

ΑΛΛΟΘΡΟΟΙ

 

“Greek is not a clean language for an old woman.”

- Juvenal

The highlight of my week was having Doctor Alfred Vincent refer at the recent Pharos Symposium on the Greek language in Australia at LaTrobe University, to my obsession with all things Karagiozi. At the conclusion of his multifaceted and nuanced discussion on our mother tongue, delivered with surgeon-like precision in elegant Modern Greek, he warned presciently: “Use it or lose it.”

Using the language immediately buys you purchase into the Hellenic sprachbund, something that was known for instance to the ancient Gauls, who despite Asterix’s best efforts in “Asterix and the Great Fight,” first used the Greek alphabet in order to encode their languages, enabling us to discover gems such as these: «Σεγομάρος ουιλλόνεος τοούτιουϲ ναμαυσάτις ειωρου βηλησάμι σόσιν νεμητον» ("Segomaros, son of Villū, citizen of Nîmes, offered this sacred enclosure to Belesama.”). The Armenians also used the Greek alphabet before using their own and their exist in North Jordan, a number of pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions where Greek letters have been used.

The word used by Homer in the Odyssey to denote a foreigner is: ἀλλόθροος, literally he who makes a strange sound and yet we find throughout history a multitude of strange-sounders who tuned their tongues to frequencies better understood by us, to the extent that the Hebrew term, lehityaven,   לְהִתְייַווֵּן literally meaning “to become Greek,” has been historically employed to mean “to assimilate,” in the same sense that we use the word «Τούρκεψε» in modern Greek to denote converting to Islam. Considering that according to one interpretation the Talmud, Greek is the most beautiful of languages, such a point of view is understandable, to say the least which is why when in 1947 Niccolo Tucci, surprised that Albert Einstein read the Greek classics with his sister Maja in the original exclaimed: “So you too, Herr Professor, have gone back to the Greeks,” Einstein responded:  “But I have never gone away from them. How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science.”

This type of attitude would account for the multitude of Greek inscriptions on the ceiling of sixteenth century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne's study, this being a time before the invention of inspirational social memes and Sports Illustrated. Thus, dangerously subversive words such as «σκέπτομαι» or such phrases from Epictetus’ Encheiridion as «Ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα,» (It is not the things themselves that disturb men, but their judgements about these things,) still exist, incised upon the joists of his place of study and should be, in my humble submission, inscribed in the premises of every Greek brotherhood in Melbourne.

Montaigne of course was taught Greek by his father, who used a multi-disciplined approach comprising of games, conversation, and exercises of solitary meditation, rather than the more traditional books and rote learning, which probably explains why he included so many personal anecdotes and reflections in his essays, having no one else to speak to, for he never went to Greek school.

Roman schoolchildren, however, did go to Greek school. According to Quintillian, elite Roman children studied Greek (instructed by Greek slaves) to the extent that even when they spoke their native Latin, they had a pronounced Greek accent, which gave one a certain cachet in those times that simply does not exist among the Greek schools of today.

Learning Greek as a Roman did give one a certain gravitas in relation to stage exits. According to Suetonius, Julius Caesar’s last words before being repurposed as a pincushion were not “Et tu Brute, but rather «καὶ σὺ τέκνον» were spoken in Greek. While knowledge of this, and the fact that he wrote all of his military correspondence in Greek were lost during the Dark Ages, faint folk memories survived in Greece and were kept alive during the long centuries of Ottoman Occupation, only to be transplanted to Melbourne where the ritual phrase is routinely pronounced by the presidents of community organisations upon being ousted from power in surprise coups by their proteges and relegated to the outer darkness, where there is only wailing and venting of spleen on social media.

Perhaps that outer darkness could be illumined by George Bernard Shaw, who observed: "If in the library of your house you do not have the works of the Greek writers then you have a house with no light,” a possible sustainable alternative to carbon-emitting fossil fuels, given the price of energy these days.

Frederick the Great of Prussian who understood and read ancient Greek and spoke Modern Greek would have appreciated such sentiments. Against his abusive and authoritarian father's wishes who doubted his masculinity, he created a secret library of Greek classics. Unfortunately, all these efforts were in vain, as he was never able to visit Oakleigh. He did however, annex Silesia, invade Bohemia and participate in the partition of Poland, proving that there is no end of things that one could accomplish when one studies Greek and his face should be on posters promoting the study of the language everywhere.

Whether one, like Mehmed the Conqueror uses Greek to write random thoughts in notebooks, or learns the language, as in the case of Omar Sharif, in order to woo women, or simply because as in the case of Christopher Lee, you can’t convincingly play a James Bond villain named after a port in Piraeus, namely Scaramanga unless you have knowledge of Greek, without the immersion of the ἀλλόθροοι, our language is much diminished, as is our delight in it. This is by the way proved by a good friend who is a classical scholar and who after a good deal of thought, was able to provide me for my delectation, the following phrase: «κύνωψ ἡ ἐν χαλαρώσει,» this being the Greek for the phrase “resting bitch-face,” used to describe my countenance when being informed that there is a distinct group of Greek-Australians who transliterate the words «αγάπη μου» as “Agabie moo,” on Valentines’ Day cards and paraphernalia.

While we and our progeny was hysterical every time we open our mouths to speak Greek, the burden of expectation and fear of error weighing unbearable upon us, Virginia Woolf and erudite others like her, take a more gourmet approach, salivating over Greek as another form of lean but nonetheless authentic meat, light on the fizz, so you can slam it down fast: "Every ounce of fat has been pared off... Then, spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly... Then there are the words themselves which... we have made expressive to us of our own emotions, θάλασσα, θάνατος, ἄνθος... so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet fittingly without blurring  the outline..., Greek is the only expression. It is useless, then.. to read Greek in translation."

Just the other day I fascinating conversation with an Albanian client. She understands Greek but cannot speak it well. I partially understand Albanian but cannot speak it. Between the two languages she expressed her lament that her grandchildren, who came to this country a decade ago, refuse to speak Albanian and tell off their parents and grandparents when they address them in Albanian stating: "Why are you using that language? No one speaks it here."

Albanian nationalism is a daughter of Greek nationalism and the grandmother's concerns mirror those our community has for its language. In the end, the grandmother shrugs her shoulders and sighs: "We should have taught them Greek instead,” proving that one man’s defeat, is another’s Favorinus. That Gallo-Roman writer, in upbraiding the Corinthians for removing a statue of him, in his ‘Corinthian Oration,’ maintained he emulated not only the voice but also the mind-set, life and style of the Greeks (οὐδὲ τὴν φωνὴν μόνο ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν γνώμην καὶ τὴν δίαιταν καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐζηλωκώς). As a result, he insisted he was pre-eminent in one quality, in ‘both resembling a Greek and being one.” (Ἕλληνι δοκεῖν τε καὶ εἶναι.) Surely it takes one to know one.

Raising up a crispy burnt toast to the Greek language, Vladimir Nabokov has the last word for a discourse in which everyone seems to want in, except for us:

“On mellow hills the Greek, as you remember,

fashioned his alphabet from cranes in flight;

his arrows crossed the sunset, then the night.

Our simple skyline and a taste for timber,

the influence of hives and conifers,

reshaped the arrows and the borrowed birds.

Yes, Sylvia?

                    “Why do you speak of words

When all we want is knowledge nicely browned?”

 

Make mine buttered with a side of gluten-free Decapentasyllable, thanks.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 7 December 2024