by Gianoula Burns
Some traditions take time to fade, the stocking at the end of the bed, the laying out of carrot and mince pie for Santa on Christmas Eve, the lights that adorn the live Christmas tree much weathered with each year, mince pies and custard, fruitcake, all those things we have come to associate with Christmas, lovingly built up when children arrive slowly fade when they grow and depart. It takes time to dismantle, but with each year one or other vanishes from the celebration and we wonder whether they ever did exist at all, just memories that are stored and unpacked when reminiscences are the norm. They meant something, sometime to someone and then memory departs and traditions are buried with the people that gave them life. She now prepares two stockings per bed, one for each couple, but they no longer sleepover, she no longer has to wait till they are fast asleep to creep into their bedrooms trying not to make a noise while placing the heavily laden parcels at their feet. That time has slipped away, gone with those other things we scarcely remember, the children’s high-pitched squeals of delight when the sun rises. Surely, they’ll remember when she’s gone the burden of that love, or so she hopes.
There are other traditions, family holidays at the beach just before the weather turns from mild autumn to cooler days foreboding winter. The walks in the early morning along the length of the beach, dogs held tightly on their leashes to prevent the sudden dash up the cliff chasing wildlife, rabbit or kangaroo. The late morning swim before the tide turns and it all turns rough and cold, boogie boards in hand, towels and thongs, a quick splash of sunscreen to protect the young sensitive skin from the burning rays that strike without mercy and the effects not felt till afterwards when burnt skin screams. She sat upon the shore and watched as those more eager could not be stopped venturing in, how they played with each ebb and flow of the sea, scanning the horizon for an appropriate wave, she looked beyond at what may lay ahead when these days die away. That tradition faded too as each grew and moved away, out of reach of memories that became photographs and were neatly filed away in albums on bookshelves or in the iCloud for the day when adult children come to visit but never stay.
She talks to a friend who reminisces about her dad long dead, but when alive insisted on celebrating his birthday with take-away fried chicken. Her friend honours that tradition, now buys the same meal and goes and eats it at his grave, in his company. She flinches at the thought of eating at the dead person’s table, but her friend smiles and expresses joy at maintaining the tradition.
She thinks of the traditions she witnessed when abroad, the remnants of rituals whose meaning has long been forgotten but still observed, the lighting of candles and placing them at the front door of homes on the eve of Easter, the killing of the lamb for Easter Sunday, the forty days of fasting before partaking of the feast, the breaking of pots on New Year’s Eve, the breaking of bread before a meal, these things that formed her in childhood, rejected, then resumed to provide some continuity with a past that made up her DNA.
“When is Greek Christmas?” a friend asks her, and she replies, “We celebrate the same as you, though I think it used to be different.” Traditions morph and meld with each migration and each incursion of connectivity with the wider world. She cooks the turkey for Christmas, one Christmas when she didn’t her daughter complained, “It’s not Christmas without the roast turkey!”. The fruitcake sits alongside the mince pies and Greek shortbread and honey walnut biscuits, traditions combined. She cobbles together cultures with food, confused on how to combine the other elements into a coherent understandable whole.
She remembers when her father, trying to avert the collapse of the traditions he steadfastly held onto argued, “A captain must hold the crew together with the glue of discipline and the crew must obey the captain otherwise the ship will sink.” She had pondered on the analogy and what would happen to the shipwreck. Slowly the scaffolding of traditions vehemently defended from the buffeting of the external forces collapsed exposing the emptiness of cultural memory. Her sister left home, suddenly and dramatically, obeying the formula of Greek tragedy, she made a phone call late one night, “I’m not coming home tonight, I’m not coming home ever.” She can still hear her mother scream and her father frantically coming to her mother’s aid, then coming into her bedroom to say, “See what your sister has done!” She had immediately replied, “About time.” Her father shook his head angrily and left her room. The ship was sinking. She abetted the ship’s demise by battering the deck with rebellion, and then walked away from the sinking ship, leaving home as well, much to her parent’s dismay.
That first year away she felt the tug of the long embedded cultural cords, at Easter she could hear the church bells ring and she sought out the richly symbolic rituals that she was so familiar with, the chanting, the incense, the late night vigil celebrated by the Greek immigrant as they had always done back in the village. She attended Saturday night service, the most iconic of the rituals, candle in hand waiting for the light to magically emerge from the church pulpit within. Remembering the fasting and the feasting with family, those long Sunday afternoons when she could briefly be a child and free. She introduced her daughter to this traditional get together, hoping to create connection without the constrictions. She carefully curated culture to avoid the strings which the puppeteer of traditions would control. The best of two worlds was always a dream, her daughter felt lost in the void in between, her son viewed it with a distant contemptuous eye, something to be observed not be immersed in.
It was with surprise that she felt the tug of homeland calling when she visited her birthplace for the first time, the island slowly came towards her or so it seemed as the ferry came into port, the hills above was where it had all begun. She took her family up those village roads looking for her first steps, her first memories, the initiation of traditions as they were back then still observed seemingly much changed, and yet not at all. Traditions etched into stone, into paths made or lost, and beneath each rock, each tree, a hidden past yearned to be seen, a pagan shrine, a god once worshipped now transformed into a saint that protected villagers from the evil that is unseen. The ancient world absorbed, buried under the church that now proclaimed itself the norm, the authority on how life must be lived. But superstition, a form of tradition, still lives in practices passed on from old to young, forming the rules of what must be done. She remembered when her grandmother came to visit how she staunchly abided by those ancient rules, “never sweep at night for you sweep away the good within the house”, or “never dust the tablecloth till first light”, for the crumbs from the evening meal to stay wrapped up till then. These she did not pass on to her kids; she thought them anachronisms that had no place. Nor the strictures of the church which forbade women from communion when they bled for, they were unclean. She shook her head sadly to think that these things had been believed, are still believed by some. And yet she took her son to the village’s Easter mass, to see the theatre first hand, to feel the rhythm of the chant, and she looked upon the altar and surrounds at all the gold that trimmed each piece and bordered the gown of the priest and was revolted by such display of wealth while the impoverished villagers themselves made the bread hoping to be blessed by his holiness.
It is New Year again and she cannot help but make the New Year’s bread with coin pushed within its flesh. She hopes to give a slice to each of her children and wish them a lucky year as her ancestors have done for centuries, a tradition established by a saint no less. It is a yearning for this belonging to roots in a far-off land a mesmerising calling that reaches out from past to present that ensures that traditions survive albeit in modified form. Each repetition of the ritual a handshake with ancestors that link to ancestors long past and with each iteration of the ritual a slight change, as each offspring partners and melds with those of other origins and other rites that hold equal weight.
She remembers walking through the main city square on her home island, a land occupied by neighbours and wanderers, Venetians, Turks, pirates and brigands and there she comes upon a statue of Confucius which seems out of place, contextually a barb which most ignore as they pass by. She cannot help but laugh at its incongruousness on the soil which inspired the bard to write the Greek national anthem. The world encroaches slowly taking bits of culture apart, the port of Piraeus is now not owned by Greece, she only hopes the Parthenon is never sold to fund the living of the Greeks. Cruise ships now put in to port and offload a medley lot of tourists from abroad who look for something, but they know not what. She looks into their faces and sees their exhaustion and confusion at being in a foreign land looking for an iteration of themselves that they can understand.
It soon will be another Easter, another practice of the ritual and the church bell will ring on a clear spring or autumn day, depending on the land she’s in but she feels no need to attend the mass but she will dye the eggs red and make the bread, and cook the lamb on the Sunday. Traditions bind those scattered by migrating waves and she now clings to the sinking ship and remembers her father’s desperate steps to keep his captaincy.
© Gianoula Burns
Gianoula Burns is a Greek Australian poet and writer. Born on a small Greek island, raised and educated in Sydney, Australia. She has published poetry and short stories in various online journals. Blurs dreams, memories and experiences to explore our place in the world and the impact of our cultural background on our emotional response and identity.
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