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